Last week’s free airspace was dominated by Bilt’s launch of its revamped portfolio of credit cards, or what it’s calling Bilt 2.0. We’ve spilled buckets of digital ink describing the new program, and by the end of the week, it had gathered some unintended steam, with the New York Times calling it “The most confusing rewards program we’ve ever seen.”
Part of the confusion around Bilt’s intricate program was the introduction of Bilt Cash, a second rewards currency earned at a 4% clip on all Bilt credit cards. In advance of the launch, Bilt said quite a bit about how rewarding Bilt Cash would be, both for unlocking point-earning on housing payments and for redeeming “dollar-for-dollar” within the Bilt ecosystem. Unfortunately, there were few details about what exactly those uses might be.
Last Friday, Bilt founder Ankur Jain, in response to the furor over Bilt Cash, introduced yet another mechanism for earning points on housing (read more about that here); this week, he announced the first tranche of potential uses for Bilt Cash.
Forget a coupon book. Bilt Cash is a veritable coupon emporium that asks users to choose from and redeem for 19 options, each with different terms and usage limits. Those affected by “coupon fatigue” may not want to read on. And for those who can’t wait to clip the coupons from the Sunday inserts? Strap in, we’re going for a ride.
Earning Bilt Cash
As a reminder, all Bilt cardholders will earn 4% back in Bilt Cash on all non-housing spend with no maximum. In addition, members earn $50 in Bilt Cash for every 25,000 Bilt points accumulated within a calendar year.
An unfortunate feature of Bilt Cash is that most of it will expire on December 31st each calendar year, regardless of when it is earned. Only $100 of Bilt Cash can be rolled over into the next year.
Full list of Bilt Cash Coupons
For the purposes of this post, I’ve separated all of the uses of Bilt Cash into three categories: Uses we like, Meh, and Silly due to restrictions. Except where noted, all options go live on 2/1/26.
Bilt Cash uses we like
- Point accelerator on everyday spend (cardholders only)
- Enables +1X bonus points on all everyday spend
- Cost: $200 Bilt Cash
- Up to 5 activations annually
- Expires after $5,000 spend or calendar year-end
- Unlock higher transfer bonuses
- Use Bilt Cash to unlock monthly transfer bonuses
- Price and availability yet to be determined
- Unlock rewards on housing payments (cardholders only)
- Every $30 in Bilt Cash redeemed unlocks 1,000 points on monthly rent or mortgage payments made through the Bilt payment portal at a rate of 1 point per $1 of housing payment
- Once you run out of Bilt Cash, you can’t earn more points on your payment. For example, if your payment is $2,000, but you only have $30 in Bilt Cash, you can only earn a maximum of 1,000 Bilt Points. In order to earn the full 2,000 points, you need to have $60 in available Bilt cash
- Up to $700/year of Blade Helicopter bookings (starts 3/1/26)
- Up to $350 per booking
- Up to 2 bookings per year
Meh
- $10/month towards Grubhub grocery or restaurant delivery (starts 3/1/26)
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- $25/month towards “select” Bilt Dining partners
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- Restaurant must participate in Bilt Mobile Dining Checkout (currently, almost no restaurants do)
- $50/month towards Bilt Dining Experiences (starts 3/1/26)
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- $50/month towards Bilt Comedy Experiences (starts 3/1/26)
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- $80/year credit towards GoPuff Fam membership (starts 3/1/26)
- Applicable to annual or monthly membership
- $10/month toward Lyft rides (Starts 3/1/26)
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- Unlock Bilt Home Away from Home Benefits
- Blue & Silver members can unlock luxury hotel booking benefits usually reserved only for Gold and Platinum members
- Cost: $95
- $40/month towards group fitness class through Bilt App
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- $10/month toward Walgreens purchases
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
Silly due to restrictions
- $5 credit towards Bilt Home Delivery powered by GoPuff (starts 3/1/26)
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- Up to $1200 in hotel credits per year through Bilt Travel
- Two-night minimum stay required
- up to $50/month for Blue/Silver members or up to $100/month for Gold/Platinum members
- Up to $150/year towards Blacklane rides
- Up to $50/year for Blue & Silver members, $100/year for Gold, or $150/year for Platinum
- Up to $64/month of Priority Pass extra guest credits (Palladium only)
- cover up to two guest fees per month; $32 per guest; up to $64 statement credit per month (note that Priority Pass guest fee is $35, not $32)
- $5/month toward Bilt Neighbourhood Parking (Starts 3/1/26)
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- $10/month toward Bilt Design Collection purchases
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
Quick Thoughts
First off, let me just say that I appreciate one thing about the Bilt folks: I think that they truly want to provide as much choice as possible for their customers. I think there is a disconnect in the execution, however. A common complaint about credit cards is that the rewards are too complex, and that there are too many monthly/quarterly/yearly coupons to remember and try to maximize.
Bilt’s answer has been to give us credit cards that generate two different, non-overlapping currencies, two ways to earn rewards on rent that can be changed monthly (neither of which is intuitive), and a choice of 19 coupons to redeem your Bilt Cash (if you choose to earn it). Oh, and each of those coupons has to be manually redeemed, has individual limits and terms, and most of them expire at the end of each calendar month, regardless of when you earn them. Woofda.
Most of these won’t move the needle for many folks, but a few made me laugh.
You can apply up to $32 twice per month toward Priority Pass guest visits if you’re a Palladium cardholder… even though guests cost $35 each (I assume that $32 amount is an error somewhere).
You can redeem up to $1200 per year for hotels through the Bilt portal, but the monthly maximums are $50 or $100, depending on elite status, and there’s a 2-night minimum. For a $50 credit.
The parking and GoPuff credits are limited to a paltry $5 per month, while Lyft, Walgreens, and Grubhub are limited to $10/month…and don’t forget to redeem Bilt Cash for the credits before you place your orders, rides, etc…otherwise no soup for you.
I actually dig on Blacklane rides, and enjoy using the credits I get from the Citi Strata Elite card. But do we need to chop a potential $150 credit into three tiers of yearly maximum limits based on elite status?
There are a few interesting options as well. Being able to redeem up to $350 per ride toward Blade rides could be significant for the rotary-inclined; buying into transfer bonuses could be appealing, but we still don’t know what the Bilt Cash price will be for that option.
The two choices that seem to stand head and shoulders above the rest are redeeming Bilt Cash for rent and buying up to $25,000 worth of 1x points accelerators per year, at $200 per $5,000 points. We’ve already discussed using Bilt Cash to unlock rewards on housing, but the points accelerators are the most intriguing to me.
I’ll dig more into those in a separate post, but it’s possible turn the Palladium card into a 4.5x – 5x everywhere earner by combining both housing rewards options in alternating months, using Bilt cash to max out your yearly points accelerators, being very disciplined about how much you spend every month, and tracking everything closely. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
Again, I do want to give everyone at Bilt some credit for their desire to offer as much personalization as they can. But I have to think that, at some point, we’ll see things pared down and simplified. Choice is great, but most folks don’t want board-game-level complexity to be a part of their regular credit card use.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
Just basics..what happens to all that bilt cash accumulated in November and December.
At least in vegas we know its stacked towards the house.
This is more “political” double speak etc…
one small correction/addition: in his email Ankur did give the example for rent day status upgrade that it would be $75 to upgrade from 75% to 100% transfer bonus (subject to change). Could be a solid option depending on the bonus and how much you’re transferring
You guys are killing me with all this analysis with minuscule rent #s. (I pay $4,200 a month in California for a modest family home. ) It seems very clear, so far, that the more you spend on the card, the lower your multiplier becomes, eventually ending up at about 3.2ish on both of the annual fee cards (assuming you max out on Dining or groceries on the $95 card). I’l be curious to see what Tim has to add, and will wait impatiently for Monday…as I still haven’t made a selection for my 2.0 card, despite Bilt texting me daily to do so, haha
Take out complaints of complexity and there are virtually no negative comments about B2.1.
The complexity issue is important for Bilt to address. In fact, they should make it their next developent focus. They should announce, not simplifaction of awards – that would amount to reduction of benefits, but simplification of how to use them. An app. combining location services, knowledge of the full panoply of cards on the user’s phone, past transaction history, etc. to act as an agent that automates card and venfor choices — in real time. Call it EZBilt.
I do wonder how the non-points world will see Bilt Cash. Lots of meh coupons for sure, but hey, I’m still easily using the $10 CSR Lyft credit every month, no problem. So, for some folks, a $10 monthly Lyft coupon, $10 at Walgreens, $25 at a restaurant (assuming they get that part of the program to be somewhat widespread…) is $45 that looks somewhat like $45 of real cash on a monthly basis or $540 on an annual basis. Sure I’d discount it by at least 25%, but it’s not crazy for someone to look to maximize that without any regard for points at all.
OMAAT had an article today about top 3 uses of Amex points last year. They were for gift cards, paying with points at checkout, and statement credits. That’s somewhat telling.
I actually think it’s important for the non-points world to want to ascribe a “real” value to Bilt Cash and to these types of coupons. Going to need some folks that take the bad redemption options so that it evens out for us points-folk to pounce on the accelerators and the like.
Spot on Tim!
Richard Kerr lol. I’m so excited to hear him spin some BS on the Miles to Go podcast about how this is innovative for the average consumer
I hope this coupon cancer doesn’t embolden the other card issuers to add even more complexity. At this rate we’ll need a PHD in credit card coupons to maximize this stuff!
EZBilt will fix that.
So for my case either I redeem Built cash for rent (seems like a good use) or I use it to make spending more money on the card more rewarding… when I’m likely sacrificing the opportunity to earn more for that purchase on another card?
I’m tempted to sign up for Blue and get the $100, but I don’t think it’s worth it taking up a valuble 5/24 slot.
> I’ll dig more into that in a separate post, but it’s possible turn the Palladium card into a 4.5x – 5x everywhere earner by combining both housing rewards options in alternating months, using Bilt cash to max out your yearly points accelerators.
This isn’t actually possible, by design. If you start the game with a surplus balance of bilt cash (which you can’t b/c of calendar year end breakage) it might look like a 4.5-5x card but it’s still not true.
Consider starting the year with your $200 bilt cash from palladium. This goes towards unlocking 1x on $5k spend. But how much bilt cash do you have at the end of the spend? $200. How much does the next accelerator cost? Also $200. You’re never generating the surplus bilt cash to spend on the rent.
You can use the extra $100 you rolled over from the previous year to make it look like for the first month you’re earning more than 3x, but that’s not actually what’s happening, since your incremental spend* is only 3x and can be no higher than that.
You could try to do funny things like enable an accelerator and swap rent methods to the 1.25x earning method (for when you spend amount >= rent), but then you will need to have subsequent unbonused (2x) spend in order to reload the $200 needed for accelerator (which then prevents you again from redeeming against rent).
Because of this, you should always spend down on rent / mortgage first if you can, then only activate the bonus earn on $5k if you have surplus spend above 75% of your rent amount. Rent is always a better deal (extra 1.33x on your 75%).
I have to respectfully disagree. Stay tuned for my Monday night post.
Can’t wait.
Ooh, fun. I thought I had worked this out but guess not.
Relatedly, do you see any reason (yet) why you couldn’t enable all 5 points accelerators at once if you had $1000 bilt cash banked?
Scratching my head, hard to see this any differently than you laid out above. Take a base case example (and forget for a moment about earning the SUB and its $4k/90 days requirement and the impact of the $495 annual fee) – you sign up on January 1, your rent is $5k annually and you start out with $200 of Bilt Cash which you immediately spend on the 1x accelerator, and you choose the 1.25x option and spend exactly $416.66 a month. Still only getting to 4.25x, right? 2x base + 1x accelerator + 1.25x housing.
Sure you can switch to the Bilt Cash option and go back and forth, but that just reduces your points on housing to a max of 1.0x, right? So I struggle to see how you can ever get above 4.25x unless you are considering the value of Bilt Cash in non-points accelerator ways in arriving at 4.5-5x.
I suppose if you could stack the points accelerators so you can get an extra 5x on $5k that would be fun, but then you get to 5x on top of 3x, not 4.5-5x.
I guess we’ll learn more on Monday!
That, and, in your example you’re only hitting 4.25x b/c your rent and spend are so low. The instant you need to buy another accelerator your next 5,000 in spend (and 5,000 in rent) would not be that high. Basically, $5000 annual spend and $5000 annual rent maximizes the % value of the $200 annual Bilt cash. Every incremental $5,000 is lower.
Agreed though, excited to see what Tim cooks up! (hopefully not an Apple 😉 )
Yep. Agree completely.
Conversely, I do think it’s somewhat fair though to view the card as 3.43x through the housing points versus 3.33x because you can use the $200 in annual B$ to lower your spend requirements by $5000. And as you note above rent at $3:100 is a better deal than the accelerator at 4:100. But depends on your housing cost and spend, if you’re going to exceed the spend required for housing points and you already have that $200 earmarked for the accelerator, you have to get that next $200 in B$ somewhere.
I suppose for the first year you could use $200 of the $300 in SUB B$, roll over $100 of it, and then in year 2 pick up the extra $100 in B$ if the spend required to unlock your full housing point potential is $50k (as you get an extra $50 B$ for each $25k spend).
Of course none of this factors in the negative impact of the $495 AF if you value the $400 of hotel credits at $0 and PP at $0.
I did the math based on following assumptions:
Hotel coupon = 0
PP = 0
Opportunity cost based on Amex BBP 2x everything
Result is under the best case scenario I am buying Bilt points at 1.36 cpp
Your math may vary but I think it will be around that number.
Glad to know that I’m not the only one who has spent way too much time over the last few days thinking about this and running down the batter on my calculator. At least it’s not keeping me up at night (looking at you Leff).
I tried to figure out a way to maximize this based on being willing to switch back and forth between the two options and get my rent payments and get the accelerator 5x. My conclusion was the it would require me to spend $5000 each time to earn the additional 5000 points. At that rate, I’m not a buyer. Now I’m hoping I overlooked something and that Tim will show me the way.
Looking foward to Monday night.
Why are you waiting till Monday to make a post about this?
Is it Monday night yet? I see 4.3x per $ for 5 months with mortgage and points accelerator giving me an avg of -3.4x per $ over 12 months.
In wracking my brain and I cannot figure this out. Can’t wait to read it
Here is my scenario. This scenario is earning Bilt cash the entire month, not considering the 1.25X option.
For example in my case is a 3.73X in Y1 (without considering bonus)
Mortgage $1,000 Monthly / 12,000 yearly
Non Rent/Mortgage Misc Expenses – $1,300 Monthly / $15,600 Yearly
*Note – I only will charge miscellaneous expenses in this card (other bonus category like Dining, Gas, Travel, ect will go to my bonus category cards)
Yearly
Points Earned on Mortgage – 12,000
Points earned non Rent – 31,200
Points Accelerator – 15,000
Total Points 58,200
Total spend (non rent) 15,600
Points per dollar 3.73 points per dollar
Bilt Cash
Beginning ($200 +300 bonus) – $500
Earned through spending – 624 ($15,600 *.4% = $624)
Used to unlock points on mortgage (360) (12,000 *.3% = 360)
Used for point accelerator (600) ($200 * 3 times)
Net Bilt Cash available $164
Less rollover for next year (100) You can rollover up to $100
Excess for use in other coupon $64
Hrmm, I don’t think it counts to use the initial $300 bonus cash. That’s a one time thing, effectively convertible to 10k points (via Rent) (see that the subsequent year you’ll start with $264). Since you can roll over $100 / yr it’s probably reasonable to start the analysis with $300 at the start of each year (and that extra $100 gives you an extra 3333 points).
If you take that out the initial $300 bonus, you have 48,200 points for 15,600 spend which is 3.1x. That’s right in the blending region of a bunch of 3x spend (from accelerator) and a bunch of 3.33x spend (from Rent).
If you want to add in the $100 rolled over, we get 51533 / 15600 = 3.30.
I’m very curious to see how Tim is going to do some magic, but at least in your case you’re squarely within the limit of 3.33x.