Update 3/24/26: Per Doctor of Credit, affected cardholders have started seeing statement credits for the foreign transaction fees hitting their accounts. If you were affected by this issue, it’s worth checking if you’ve received a refund yet.
Update 3/12/26: Per this screenshot of an email from Bilt CEO Ankur Jain:
Hey [redacted] copying in the cardless team here as well to dig in asap on your fraud charges.
On the other one, we are aware of the questions surrounding final transaction amounts for foreign transactions and are actively reviewing this matter with our card partners that manage the program. There should be o change to foreign transaction fees vs. the 1.0 card and if any fees have been added we will ensure our banking partners refund them.
It’s been crickets from Bilt following our email to them. However, View From The Wing received a statement from a Bilt spokesperson that’s virtually identical to the message above that Ankur Jain also emailed a Bilt cardholder.
There’s also a report from at least one Redditor that makes it seem like it’s still worth keeping an eye on how much you’re being charged for transactions. As previously noted in the original post below, when someone made a purchase overseas, one amount was being displayed in the Bilt app and an amount that was 0.2% higher was being displayed on their statement. However, apparently the transaction listing in the Bilt app is now matching the higher statement amount, rather than the statement amount being reduced to match the transaction listing in the app. Hopefully this doesn’t mean that the 0.2% is being charged in a more secretive way. If you previously took screenshots of the different amounts before they made that change, I’d definitely be keeping hold of those.
Original post follows below.
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One of the appealing features of the Bilt 2.0 cards is that they’re listed as having no foreign transaction fee, even the no annual fee Bilt Blue card. Well, it turns out that might not be strictly true.
Reader Joe gave us a heads up that Bilt is reportedly charging a 0.2% fee on foreign transactions and that certainly does seem to be the case.
When researching this, I came across this post on Reddit which follows further reports that a 0.2% fee is being charged when making purchases overseas. This 0.2% fee appears to arise from Mastercard which charges a 0.2% currency conversion fee for foreign transactions. Other credit card issuers that run on the Mastercard network and advertise no foreign transaction fees eat this fee themselves and don’t pass it on to the cardholder. That, of course, makes sense seeing as they’re advertising the card as having no foreign transaction fee and the 0.2% fee is being charged by Mastercard for conversion of said foreign transactions.
With the Bilt credit cards though, that’s not happening. There’s a very helpful explanation by Reddit user falxfour here which details their experience, not only on their new Bilt credit card, but with their Bilt 1.0 and separate Wells Fargo credit cards too. With overseas transactions charged to their original Bilt 1.0 card and a different Wells Fargo credit card, the amounts in a foreign currency listed on their statements matched what was expected based on Mastercard’s Currency Converter Calculator.
However, the calculations work differently on their Bilt 2.0 card, although it depends on where you look. This commenter identified that the transaction listing in the Bilt app matches the calculations that Mastercard makes via its Currency Converter Calculator, but the transaction listing on their statement is slightly higher as a result of the 0.2% currency conversion fee being added on.
Even though the fee being charged is only 0.2%, it’s completely unacceptable considering the cards are marketed as having no foreign transaction fee. My suspicion is that this fee is being charged in error as a result of the way that Cardless is administering the Bilt cards, rather than it being a deliberate choice made by Bilt. As a result, we’ll hopefully see cardholders getting a refund for all the foreign transactions that have been overcharged since the Bilt 2.0 cards went live, with the 0.2% fee not being charged going forward, but that remains to be seen.
We’ve reached out to Bilt to highlight this problem and to get confirmation on their resolution for the overcharging that’s been going on. We’ll update this post if we receive a reply from them.
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How can you tell if you are being charged this?? I’ve been spending a lot on my card in Japan and I did make a large handbag purchase and it is about $16 more than what the conversion showed on my iPhone calculator, which is even more than 0.2% more like 0.7%.
Mastercard has a tool where you can lookup
Note that Mastercard conversions may be at a higher rate than whatever you google which is what you’re seeing
The 0.2% was a fee on top of the published Mastercard rate
I received my $6.33 BILT refund for foreign transaction fees.
Congrats. Well-deserved.
Just got this generalize Email from Bilt. Not sure if it’s because I emailed them or because I used my card internationally that I was tagged to receive it or if everyone got it.
We wanted to give you a quick heads up about an issue we recently identified.
A small number of members noticed an unexpected foreign transaction fee appearing on certain international purchases. As you know, Bilt cards do not charge foreign transaction fees, and those charges were not intended.
After looking into it with our card partners, they found a configuration that caused a 0.20% network fee to be passed along incorrectly on some foreign transactions. This has now been identified and is being corrected ASAP.
If any of these fees appeared on your statement, no action is needed from you. We will automatically apply a statement credit in the coming week to any impacted transactions.
We appreciate the members who flagged this quickly so we could investigate with our partners and resolve it.
Thank you for being part of Bilt. We’re committed to making sure things work exactly the way they should — and when they don’t, we’ll always make it right.
If you have any questions, our team is always here to help.
Thanks,
The Bilt Team
Oof, I just read the Forbes article, “‘No Remorse, No Accountability’—Bilt Users In Uproar Over New Credit Cards.” Brutal. Expect the Bilt flying monkeys to descend on Forbes.
Excellent use of ‘Oof’ Jimmy.
I just spent about $4kUSD in New Zealand on this card. Have plenty of other no foreign fee cards that I would have used instead. And yup, I’ve checked that the rates are all .2% above Mastercard rates. I’ve written them an email. I told them that if they were in fact charging a foreign fee after advertising none they needed to make a public statement in addition to returning the difference. This might seem small but .2% can be a big number across an entire ecosystem and IF they were trying to do this in order skim additional revenue and hoping it was small enough for people not to notice, then they have some explaining to do. I will update if I hear back from them.
I live abroad and the hidden fee is a lot more than 0.2%. I tested the same purchase from the same store with the Palladium card versus my Atmos Summit card.
With the Atmos Summit card, I get very near the spot rate or even better, with the Palladium card I’m being charged 0.9% MORE than spot, meaning the foreign transaction fee is significantly more than 0.2%.
As an expat abroad with multiple mortgages in the US, I wanted to pair the Palladium card with my Summit, but with this new development my Palladium is being canceled after the first year, a lot more hoops to jump through to get a worse multiplier with a hidden foreign transaction fee.
“View From The Wing has a statement from a Bilt spokesperson, but that’s virtually identical to the message above that Ankur Jain emailed a Bilt cardholder, so it’s not clear if that’s a statement they’ve given him directly, or if it’s pulled from the same Reddit post referenced above.”
It was a statement given to.me by Bilt
Thanks – I’ll update the post.
Praise be to our dear thot leader!
Lead by the thot — that’s the Pepper Way.
No idea why this occurred to me now, but if you want to block the comments of a specific user you can do so using uBlock Origin rules. (It is vaguely possible I just blocked a user that might or might not specialize in posting grade school insults.)
Bilt cannot seem to verify my ID (or, perhaps, the issue is with Cardless) despite a 25+ year credit history and credit accounts with most major banks. It takes weeks to get response to emails, which then say nothing of substance, and even their online chat function is unanswered for hours or more. Bilt is all show, and no substance: it is trash, that used to work because Wells subsdised it.
Bilt like garbage
Ehem, some prefer to call it ‘trash’ sir.
I have a property in Belize where currency is pegged to the USD at 2:1. I’ve paid utilities there every rent day for the past 2 years. My cable bill has always been 68 BZE which Bilt has correctly charged as 34 USD, exactly half – as it has been with every other “no foreign transaction fee” card that I’ve used there. Now it is showing on my bill as $34.07. When I asked Bilt’s chat about it, the reply was that if I was seeing a .2% fee, it must be from the merchant. When I challenged this, they then said it was the “Mastercard exchange rate not a Bilt-imposed fee” so they have no way to adjust or refund it and I would have to contact their card servicing partner…”
I have been a big Bilt supporter but this seems very shady. If it had been any other currency or any other bill/charge that might vary somewhat, I may have never noticed it. I feel silly disputing 7 cents but I’ve seen Office Space and these pennys add up!
Possible consumer fraud. If this affects anyone a few hundred dollars worth, might want to talk to a consumer lawyer. Some types of suits are treble damages + attorney’s fees if you win.
seems like one of those massive tort claims that results in a .02 coupon for the plaintiffs
They have already announced that any charges will be refunded. Instead of another piece to air your anti-Bilt bigotry, here is the article you should have written:
“Frequent Miler First Year Value Calculator Doesn’t Work any More in a World Of Internal Currencies Like Bilt”
Link the announcement.
https://viewfromthewing.com/bilt-says-cardholders-will-be-refunded-after-reports-of-a-hidden-0-2-foreign-transaction-fee/
That’s not an official announcement from Bilt, just Gary Leff reporting something someone might have said to him.
Read it! It reproduces the Bilt text. If you want to see the original Bilt document make an effort and search for it.
The statement in that post is the same one that we published above, so I’m unsure what your complaint is.
Awaiting approval. A Google on “Using Frequent Miler’s Valuation Method, The Bilt Palladium Card Is The Most Valuable Card They Have Ever Seen, Even With Zero Housing Spend” will get you there.
If the “bigotry” you’re concerned about in 2026 is criticism of a multimillion dollar financial services company, I’d suggest you reexamine your priorities.
Did you read the text? Stephen Pepper has an ongoing bigotry toward Bilt. He alleged they were “lying” in an earlier piece. That is the level. This is not a serious journalist, it is someone using Frequent Miler to throw up all their prejudices about a specific company.
If you thought harder, you would realise that you are the unwitting target of this. All that money you spent on your premium VIP Frequent Miler subscription, all that money your parents spent to educate you, is being used to make you the unwittingly receptacle for someone else’s bigotry.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
L3 again is obsessed with Stephen and has a temper tantrum with every post.
Your tinfoil hat is definitely working overtime.
If you are tired of Bilt trolls, I suggest boycotting Bilt to show your displeasure.
Troll the trolls, friends.
I am , and have, until everything settles down
Big or small, they’re screwing over the people who actually stuck with them through the 2.0 conversion. It’s an actual thing, documented by actual customers.
It’s not “anti-Bilt” bigotry to call out lying liars whenever they lie.
According to Reddit the CEO is aware and promising refunds.
https://www.reddit.com/r/biltrewards/s/t9FZCEN8Na
Thank you – I’ve just updated the post. It looks like there might still be some shadiness going on though, although that remains to be seen.
There never was any shadiness, just your bias. Here is the article you meant to write: “What is World Legend and Does It Differ Across Mastercards?”
I feel Amex has better exchange rate than visa and MasterCard. Anyone have these findings or I am the only one with this thought. Almost everywhere ppl say master card is best followed by visa and Amex at the last
I secretly live in Europe (don’t tell Citi, Amex, BofA or Chase). I have done the experiment a few times and my findings go along with the conventional wisdom. Happy to do it again this weekend and report back on CHF and Euro to USD rates.