Bilt, the neighborhood rewards program that offers the opportunity to earn points on rent, mortgage, and with a plethora of neighborhood merchants, has officially announced their new “Bilt Card 2.0” credit card lineup today. Those who followed leaked details last week won’t find many surprises here, as the new cards are more or less what they were rumored to be.
Three new Bilt cards: Bilt Blue, Bilt Obsidian, Bilt Palladium
Bilt, in conjunction with Cardless, has officially announced the launch of three new credit cards today. All three cards will be available for use beginning on February 7, 2026, but existing cardholders can choose their new card today (if they wish to keep a Bilt card), or it will be possible to “pre-order” by applying for one of the new cards now in order to have it at launch.
Details of each card are as follows:
Bilt Blue card
- Annual fee – $0
- Welcome offer – $100 Bilt Cash upon approval (no minimum spend required)
- Bilt points earning rate – 1x on everyday spend (including unlimited 1x on mortgage and rent, subject to a 3% fee that can be offset with Bilt Cash)
- Bilt Cash earning rate – 4% on everyday spend (excludes mortgage & rent)
- Card features/benefits:
- No foreign transaction fees
- Access to the Neighborhood Benefits program
- Redeem Bilt Cash to waive mortgage and rent transaction fees
Bilt Obsidian Card
- Annual fee – $95
- Welcome offer – $200 Bilt Cash upon approval (no minimum spend required)
- Bilt points earning rate:
- 3x on dining or grocery (you can choose within 30 days of approval and then change once per year in January). 3x grocery earning is capped at $25K spend per year
- 2x on travel
- 1x on everyday spend (including unlimited 1x on mortgage and rent, though be aware that you will need to use Bilt Cash to offset the credit card transaction fee to earn points on rent/mortgage)
- Bilt Cash earning rate – 4% on everyday spend (excludes mortgage & rent)
- Card features/benefits:
- $100 Bilt Travel Hotel credit (twice annual i.e. $50 Jan-Jun & $50 Jul-Dec). Two night minimum stay required.
- Cellphone protection
- Redeem Bilt Cash to waive mortgage and rent transaction fees
Bilt Palladium Card
- Annual fee – $495
- Welcome offer – 50,000 Bilt points + $300 Bilt Cash + Bilt Gold status after $4,000 spend in first three months
- Bilt points earning rate:
- 2x on everyday spend
- Unlimited 1x on mortgage and rent, though be aware that you will need to use Bilt Cash to offset the credit card transaction fee to earn points on rent/mortgage).
- Bilt Cash earning rate – 4% on everyday spend (excludes mortgage & rent)
- Card features/benefits:
- $400 Bilt Travel Hotel credit (twice annual i.e. $200 Jan-Jun & $200 Jul-Dec). Two night minimum stay required.
- $200 Bilt Cash annually
- Priority Pass
- Redeem Bilt Cash to waive mortgage and rent transaction fees
Mastercard benefits
It is worth mentioning that all three cards will carry some Mastercard-related benefits as the Blue and Obsidian cards will be World Elite Mastercards and the Palladium card will be a World Legend Mastercard. This chart shows benefits at a high level, though we don’t yet have full details regarding coverage limits:
Quick Thoughts
We’ll have far more analysis to come, but the short story here is that those who primarily used Bilt to earn points on rent with no fee and just a few small transactions per month will be unhappy (as will those who care about 5/24 and now may be on their 3rd “new account” from Bilt and be facing a new Wells Fargo account as well if they keep that line open). That stinks.
On the other hand, depending on the applications and limitations of Bilt Cash, the new cards could be compelling to a new segment of customers. On the surface, they will unlock the ability to earn unlimited points on rent and mortgage (you can even pay rent/mortgage on multiple homes or for family and friends).
To be clear, it will still be possible to pay rent (and now mortgage) without a fee (including any mortgage lender.
Earning rewards on rent or mortgage is a bit more complicated:
- You can unlock up to 1x on rent by using Bilt Cash at a value of $30 in Bilt Cash for each 1,000 points (you can use more or less Bilt Cash depending on the total cost of your rent or mortgage
- If you don’t have enough Bilt Cash to unlock a full 1x points on your rent or mortgage payment, you can choose to pay a 3% fee on the amount not covered by Bilt Cash or choose not to earn 1x points on the full payment. For instance, if your rent costs $3,000 and you have $60 in Bilt Cash, you can use that $60 to unlock 2,000 points on that rent payment. You can then choose to pay $30 if you want to earn a full 1x (3,000 total points).
While Bilt marketing materials reference using $30 of Bilt Cash to earn 1,000 points on rent or mortgage, we are told that there are no minimums and that cardholders can apply any amount of Bilt Cash that they wish. For instance, if you spend $1,000 on your Bilt Card, you’ll earn $40 worth of Bilt Cash. You could then pay your mortgage or rent with your Bilt Card and use that $40 in Bilt Cash to earn up to 1,333 points on your rent/mortgage payment (if the total payment is higher, you can either pay the difference without a fee and no additional rewards or you can pay the fee in order to earn rewards). I wouldn’t be a buyer of Bilt points at a 3% fee, but the option is there.
Note that you will not be able to offset the credit card transaction fee for non-Bilt cards. In other words, if you pay your rent with your Alaska Airlines Visa Signature card (which currently incurs a 3% fee), you will not be able to offset the fee with Bilt Cash. You can only use Bilt Cash to earn rewards when using your Bilt card to pay rent/mortgage.
We will have a full FAQ post out shortly with the answers to additional questions.
Ultimately, the value proposition relies on your valuation of Bilt Cash, and that valuation of Bilt Cash depends heavily on the rules and redemption options. What we know so far is that Bilt Cash will expire at the end of the year (even Bilt Cash earned as late as November and December), with the ability to roll over up to $100 in Bilt Cash. We are told that Bilt Cash can be used dollar-for-dollar toward things like Lyft rides, home delivery, hotel bookings, and “more to come” (including the ability to unlock status for a day to take advantage of a Rent Day transfer bonus). However, the mechanics and limitations are mostly unknown. If it turns out to be easy to use Bilt Cash, that will obviously strengthen the value proposition of the new cards. If not, some may still find the new cards useful if they have enough otherwise unbonused spend each month, but the utility of Bilt Cash is a big factor.
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The Palladium Card is compelling for mortgage holders and higher spenders. I personally have a modest mortgage of $1,400 per month, so my non-rent spend would only need to be $1,000 to earn the BILT cash to offset. Using it as a catch-all is intriguing as our family spends well over $25k of 2x miscellaneous spend in a year, which would keep the Gold status after it expires with the card. That will allow us to keep the 1:1 ratio with Rakuten and hopefully get better transfer bonuses. Since I’m way over 5/24, this will allow us to capture some of those Hyatt points and having ATMOS options are not bad either. I think as long as we’re able to use the hotel credit, I think it’s a win and may just well replace my Venture X card…
Correct me if I am wrong, but let’s say a valuation of 2 cents per point. Lets say you get the palladium and do a $3,000 transaction and you come up with $120 of fee free credit via bilt cash for rent/mortgate. Then you can take that amount and pay a 5k monthly mortgage…netting an extra 5k points. Let say you transfer to Hyatt…it may accrue at 2 cpp $100…why would I take the $100 equivalent in points compared to just using the bilt cash for uber or lyft or some other benefits that I am guaranted cash. I understand when hyatt is 5cpp for park hyatt or you get a great first class or business class redeption, but getting the minimum 2cpp may be harder to justify. Let me know if I am wrong in that a redeption would have to be higher 2.4cpp for it to be worth it to pay rent/mortage with card.
Paying a mortgage with Bilt is effectively making Bilt a 2.33x card.
On (say) a $4K mortgage payment I will be short 120 Bilt cash, so I will have to spend $3K (at 4%) just to zero that out. For my trouble I will earn 4K (1x on the mortgage) +3K Bilt points on the spend, so 7K for a 3K spend that would otherwise be used to earn 6K MR (assuming $0 AF Blue Business Plus at 2x MR). Each incremental $ will earn 100 Bilt points and $0.04 Bilt cash.
So if you spend exactly 75% of your mortgage each month you will be at 2.33x. Beyond that you are trading off 1x in points for 4% in Bilt Cash – whether it’s worthwhile depends on how much the cash is worth.
This neglects category bonuses but there are plenty of other cards that have similar bonuses for the same categories.
Mildly interesting, but I would only consider using up a 5/24 if Chase and Amex slow down their approval rates (which they have been doing), and Barclays/BofA/Wells Fargo are offering alternatives.
I think the changes can be summed up as this: earing points on your rent is no longer a low-effort affair. For existing rent customers, this is obviously a big downgrade; however, this will be a big upgrade for others who can make the math work, especially mortgage payers.
Normally I’m not a fan of big corporations fattening their profits, but in this case I don’t mind and am actually appreciative of how flexible the new system is, even if it’s convoluted. Given the massive losses that Wells Fargo suffered and the demise of Mesa, it’s obvious that the old system was too good to last and would have eventually bankrupted Bilt after Wells Fargo stopped absorbing their losses. The new system rewards you for big spend on the card without punishing you if you don’t meet a minimum spend requirement. Don’t met the 75% minimum spend requirement to unlock your full rent/mortgage points? No problem, you’ll still get a prorated amount or can pay the difference.
My head is still buzzing with this announcement, and I would love if the FM team could do some analyses to help us out! Below are some of my ideas.
1. Does anything about today’s announcement change anyone’s mind on whether to use Bilt cards for rent/mortgage vs using the Atmos card?
2. Elsewhere I’ve read that you can only have one of these cards. I can’t think of a single good use case for applying for the Blue Card; that card seems almost totally worthless given the high-spend requirements to unlock fee-free points. However, the Obsidian and Palladium both have strong use cases. Which would you guys prefer?
3. Now that Bilt Gold is easy to get, would you consider going for Platinum to be worthwhile if you wouldn’t otherwise acquire it organically?
4. The Palladium card is obviously a copy of the Venture X card. Given that Bilt points are more valuable than Capital One points, is switching from the Venture X to the Palladium a no-brainer? As things currently stand, does this hurt Capital One’s long-term usefulness due to opportunity costs from the Palladium? I know that the Venture X has a travel credit that’s leagues better than the Palladium, but is that enough to keep it?
Thank you!
Palladium is indeed like a knockoff VX with better transfer partners (but, no C1 lounge access).
More should be clear within a few days, but this has radically shifted the Bilt landscape where rent/mortgage seems to really be the secondary option and the primary question for optimizing value is “how useful is that Bilt cash?”
If you have a card with the $50 or $200 Bilt portal hotel credit I’d be trying to stack that with redeeming the 4% Bilt cash to get two free stays a year. If that can hopefully all be used on loyalty eligible stays, I’d also get elite nights, status benefits, and hotel chain points from my covered stay which really adds to the value proposition there. 2-night minimum stinks but with no luxury hotel requirement I’d be burning it on something more basic like a Hyatt Place or Regency, Residence Inn, Marriott Courtyard, etc. There are enough times where I’m booking a cash stay at one of these because the points value isn’t there that I could easily switch to making the booking through Bilt and have that stay use up credits and get covered by Bilt cash.
With the Lyft partnership the remainder of the 4% would probably cover my domestic rideshare needs for a year when traveling.
Somehow Bilt has made me more interested in their cards while simultaneously nerfing the old rent payment scheme and most of the interest in mortgage payments.
Something is not adding up about Bilt Cash. When you use it to earn points on rent or mortgage, you are buying Bilt points at a rate of 3.33 cents of Bilt Cash per Bilt point. If you were using real cash, that is a terrible deal that you would never take! Greg and Nick touched on this in their podcast, depending on how Bilt Cash works, it may make sense to not use it on rent earnings at all.
Put another way, the break even point between using Bilt cash for Bilt point earnings and using it for other things (for simplicity, valuing Bilt points at 1 cent each here) is valuing Bilt cash at one third of face value. If you value Bilt cash at more than one third, then you may not want to use it on point earnings. I fear this is a bad sign for the value of Bilt cash redemptions. Dollar-for-dollar value is promised, but there could be other limits placed to reduce the value. It could be something like $10 Bilt cash gets $10 off a $50 Lyft ride. It could be “dollar-for-dollar” but ends up that Bilt cash becomes the true coupon book of Bilt 2.0. Otherwise the $0 annual fee card would become an up to ~5% catch-all card which is obviously unsustainable.
It is unfortunate that we are being asked to pick cards that have different amounts of bonus (or annual) Bilt cash, without knowing its value. Although at least a floor value is known given the conversion rate to Bilt points. In that case, the Palladium card’s annual bonus is $200 Bilt cash which converts to 6,666 Bilt points – makes the annual fee harder to justify when thought of that way.
Kerr on Reddit AMA literally just say about BILT Cash redemptions… “we are still working on” it. LOL.
“Two-night minimum stay required” for those hotel credits, huh.
CSR The Edit, Citi Strata Elite… “Hey…that’s our thang!”
The goal it seems is that Bilt wants to be a card for the folks like my brother. He has a couple reward travel cards, but he doesn’t churn. He doesn’t obsess. Bilt has created a card that let’s most folks get points on their rent if they are loyal to Bilt. They solved the issue that Mesa could not. Will I add it? Probably not. But, my brother probably will and that’s the consumer that they were seeking.
Your brother is missing out. Get him on the churn-mobile!
I called Wells Fargo to close my Bilt 1.0 card. “Press 1 to close your Bilt card.” I guess they saw this coming.
If you make your selection with BILT, after the confirmation, they literally ask you whether you want to close your old Wells Fargo card. Of course, it’s practical, but, also, it kinda feels like a messy divorce.
Bilt made a huge mistake by not announcing weeks or months ago that the old model was effectively dead. So many people are crapping on this refresh because they are still comparing it to Bilt 1.0.
From my quick analysis (with some caveats), you can earn around 3.33 points per dollar with the most expensive Bilt card. The more you spend on the card past the 75% rent/mortgage amount, the lower that points per dollar will shift to 2x instead. But 3.33 is really competitive, especially since Bilt has so many stellar transfer partners and offers so many good transfer bonuses.
The big kicker is the need to go all-in on the Bilt ecosystem. I love applying for new SUBs, so I’m not sure I’m ready to do that. But if I were, it seems to me that the new Bilt setup is pretty competitive, ESPECIALLY if it turns out there’s actually value with Bilt cash beyond just paying rent (I’d view Lyft same as cash since we don’t have a car).
For everyone commenting how horrible this is: I understand. I enjoyed the Bilt gravy train while it lasted, too. But the new offering is exactly that: a NEW offering. And from what I wrote above, I don’t think it’s necessarily horrible. I’m planning to get the Palladium myself, because I fully expect Bilt will burn a lot of VC money with lucrative transfer bonuses and other offers this year.
The one thing I hate atrociously: the 2 night requirement for the travel credit. I absolutely detest when credit card companies do that.
CSR The Edit and Citi Strata Elite credits would like a word…
If Bilt offered some bonus categories like 3x-4x on restaurants for their $500 card it might be more enticing.
True, but even without those, I think the earnings are still competitive. I had asked GPT this question based on my own use case:
“lets assume i spent $4k per month on a credit card. i either put all that spend on the bilt card plus paid rent with the bilt card OR i put all that spend on amex cards but did not earn any points on rent in that case. with amex, $1k of the spend would be at 4x and $3k of the spend would be at 2x. the total bilt annual fee is $495 and the total amex annual fee is $325.
in both scenarios, please let me know how many total points id have earned at the end of the year. and what my average points per dollar would be for each scenario”
and the results:
Bilt points earned: 138,000
2.85 points per dollar
Amex points earned: 120,000
2.48 points per dollar
That’s really not bad for a simple one card setup with excellent transfer partners.
If only I weren’t so addicted to chasing SUBs :(((
I’d consider it more the Wells Fargo gravy train, since, like, you know… they were the ones losing $10 million per month on BILT. Meanwhile, Ankur was hosting parties with Ja Rule or whoever. LOL.
And, oh yeah, the new sugar-daddies are definitely the VCs. Yikes to them in a few months/years.
“To be clear, it will still be possible to pay rent (and now mortgage) without a fee (including any mortgage lender). However, if you want to earn rewards, you’ll need to either pay a 3% fee or pay using the Bilt Card and offset the mortgage/rent rewards fee with Bilt Cash.“
this is… an absurdly bad deal. I absolutely cannot imagine killing a program more effectively than this. Why would I bother to pay with your service if I earn no points? Worse, the $75 per payment fee completely annihilates any value I’ve gained from those points.
I have to instead spend $1875 a month with 4% back to offset that fee. Why wouldn’t I just spend on another card that earns transferable points, and at a higher rate than these news cards?
Atrocious deal!!!
Where did the $75 per payment fee come from?
Also, your question “Why would I bother to pay with your service” assumes your situation, but there are apartment buildings that use Bilt as their payments platform, so those people may want to use it. Also, I effectively get a ~20 days of float from paying my rent through Bilt, so if that continues to work the same way, and interest rates stay high, I could see myself continuing to use Bilt without any miles.
I’m not sure how much this is an “Atrocious deal” (perhaps buying Bilt points at 3% is a bad deal, but not atrocious) but rather getting rid of a “too good to last forever” deal of free 1x miles on rent.
I don’t get all the hate. It seems reasonable as a premium card for 2x transferable points to some good partners + 4% Bilt cash (which I’ll value at 2%). It doesn’t have the crazy coupon book of Amex Plat, CSR or CSE. It’s pretty similar to the VX in that you only have to use the travel portal to burn credits, though it’s more limiting in that you can only use it for hotels.
It’s all about expectation setting. People are just pissed that free rent points was not a viable business model. The new offering is not all that bad depending on your use case.
Totally agree. Got approved for me and my wife both on Palladium card. Perfect for both of our mortgages. Their transfers partners fit our travel lifestyle so it looks like Bilt is our main spending card. And inks cards as well 🙂
Palladium is very clearly emulating the Venture X playbook. Bilt can’t compete with AMEX in the coupon book space as they don’t have the customer base to throw around as a marketing tool for negotiating vendor credits, they are smart to take a different approach. And they have a better transfer partner collection than Capital One.
Mixed feelings on the credit. It’s split into two uses a year and requires a 2-night stay, plus limited to hotels which makes it quite a bit less flexible than the Venture X credit. But if Bilt has a large number of properties bookable as loyalty eligible – earning elite nights, hotel points, and granting status benefits – that makes it a much more compelling use for a hotel stay. $200 would be fine for a Hyatt Regency or Marriott stay I needed to make anyway but would not want to use a travel portal credit for because I’d want my elite nights and breakfast benefit.
Because after making a sudden and drastic change with only a couple of weeks notice to decide what to do, Bilt is now offering much less and is trying to force their way to the top of your wallet. Since they’ve shown little trustworthiness in how they’ve gone about this I’m not sanguine that they won’t make more surprise “enhancements”. Further, while they’re technically keeping to their word about paying rent for free they’ve taken away the benefit of doing that unless you spend a lot of money to make it happen. Let’s also not forget other devaluations Bilt has made. Lastly, remember the last really exciting transfer offer Bilt made? Me neither. I don’t suggest that the program is worthless, simply that it has some really big holes in it that make it valuable to less and less people.
Fellas, if you jump on the Palladium offer, you can get a limited-edition mirror-finish… ooh lala… that changes everything.
And, once accept the offer, BILT asks whether you want to close your old Wells Fargo card. BAH! Cold-blooded.
can you pay property tax with this if it isn’t escrowed into the mortgage?
I feel Bilt is going to care less about what you pay for using their rent payment service. Its not free miles anymore.
Can you earn points for Home Equity Loans the same way you would for a mortgage?