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During 2023, Bilt ran a bunch of excellent transfer bonuses. They’re kicking off the new year in style by continuing that on Rent Day, but in an even better way. That’s because on January 1 they’re offering a 75%-150% transfer bonus to not one, not two, but three transfer partners.
The Deal
- Get a 75%-150% bonus when transferring Bilt points to the following programs on January 1, 2024:
- Virgin
- IHG One Rewards
- Flying Blue
Key Terms
- Valid January 1, 2024 only.
- Bonus rates depend on status in the Bilt Rewards program:
- Blue = 75% transfer bonus
- Silver = 100% transfer bonus
- Gold = 125% transfer bonus
- Platinum = 150% transfer bonus
- Blue members must transfer a minimum of 2,000 Bilt Points.
Quick Thoughts
IHG One Rewards points frequently go on sale for 0.5cpp, so even if you have Platinum status with Bilt it’s not worth transferring to IHG. However, bonuses of 75%-150% for Virgin and Flying Blue are excellent and worth considering.
In fact, bonuses this high can make speculative transfers a more reasonable consideration too. That puts you at the mercy of the devaluation and/or award availability gods, but it would have to be a pretty severe devaluation to negate the extra 75%-150% bonus points/miles you’d earn with Virgin or Flying Blue.
As always with these Bilt Rent Day transfer bonuses, they’re only valid on the first day of the month, so be sure to make your transfer(s) on January 1 if you’re interested.
Other Rent Day Features
The transfer bonuses are clearly the headline offers as getting 75%-150% bonuses to three loyalty programs at the same time is unheard of. However, on January 1 Bilt will be running several other Rent Day promos:
- Ride With Lyft – Bilt cardholders can activate a $5 Lyft credit in the Bilt app on the Rent Day tab. It can take up to 72 hours for it to appear under ‘Lyft Pass’ in the payment section of the Lyft app, so there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to use it when getting a ride home from a New Year’s Eve party.
- Double Points – As always, you can earn double points in all categories on the Bilt Mastercard on January 1.
- Point Quest Trivia – There’ll be another edition of Point Quest where you can earn up to 250 bonus Bilt Rewards points. This is open to anyone with a Bilt Rewards account, not just cardholders.
- SoulCycle – Another Rent Day staple, you can get a free ride at SoulCycle in a special-themed class when booking through the Bilt app. You can book the ride from December 29, 2023.
- Rent Free Game Show – This gives you the opportunity to get your rent paid for the month.
- Amazon – Bilt cardholders can get a 50% bonus when redeeming points for Amazon purchases. This only gets you 1.05cpp (cents per point) of value as the normal redemption rate is 0.7cpp, so it should generally be avoided as that’s poor value for your points considering the extra value you can get by transferring to travel partners.
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If I transfer into my flying blue account, can I then move the miles to my SO via the Family Pool?
Im having trouble getting too excited about this Bilt card (if you dont pay rent).
Let’s say you get the Bilt card. Spend $1,000 on Bilt day for normal spend (2X). Then get 75% bonus on transfer – so thats effectively 3.5X on spend. That $1000 you spent is worth 3,500 Flying Blue points. Conversely – if you go to staples, buy VCGs at 5X, then for that $1,000 you (could) get 5,000 Flying Blue points.
Even if you have the 150% multiplier – Thats 5,000 points (same as VCGs).
So what’s the big deal with the excitement here?
The Bilt card is particularly useful for people who rent. Being able to earn rewards when paying rent isn’t available for many renters otherwise. If their apartment complex or landlord does let them pay by credit card, there’s usually a 3%+ fee which makes it not worthwhile unless you’re working on a minimum spend requirement.
As for everyday spend, earning 2x transferable miles on the first of the month is great as there aren’t many ways to earn 2x for Hyatt, American Airlines, etc. on everyday spend. Earning 5x on an Ink Cash can be an excellent alternative, but that’s provided your everyday spend locations give you the chance to redeem the Visa gift cards. If you want to make a purchase of $200.01+ online, you can’t use them. If you want to pay in person for a $1,000 purchase, the retailer might not accept five different $200 VGCs, whereas you could pay with Bilt.
This can also be a both/and situation rather than either/or. If you can only do one, earning 5x makes more sense provided you can then liquidate the VGCs. For others though, buying and liquidating VGCs at 5x is a completely different decision versus what they’d want to use for everyday spend.
But if you use it for dining that 6x, not 2x, and book travel for 4x instead of 3x. Yeah maybe you’re not spending $1k on either of those categories, but limiting it to the 1x normal spend undersells it.
If you don’t have a Bilt CC, you have Bilt blue status and need at least 2,000 points to do a transfer. I was a few hundred points short and was able to link a few Bilt partner airlines (BA, IB, Aer Lingus) to get the needed points.
Have you guys discussed the IHG Premier referral sign on offer of 4 free nights (worth up to 40K points per night) after spending $3K? My referral link produced this offer that I don’t see publicly available and can’t find other websites talking about it.
I hadn’t seen that offer before now, but it looks like that’s the offer my IHG Premier card gives too for referrals.
For most people that’ll be an inferior offer. The current best offer we have listed gives 140k points when spending $3k. While you can get up to 160k points worth of value from the four free night certificates, that doesn’t tell the whole story. If you’d be redeeming those certificates for a four night stay costing exactly 40k points per night, you could alternately book that same stay for only 120k points due to IHG Premier cardholders getting every 4th night free on award stays. That would mean you’d have 20k points left over from the welcome offer, rather than nothing with the certificates offer.
For people who’d be booking stays of less than four nights, you might manage to get better value with the certs than with 140k points. However, there are two other features that make the points option better for most people. One is that the certificates expire whereas the points don’t provided your account has some kind of activity or you keep your Premier card open.
The other is that points are far more flexible. The most free nights you can get with four 40k certs is four nights. With points, you could potentially get up to two weeks in IHG properties if award pricing is low enough.
This is tempting. Virgin and Flying Blue are not on my flight shopping list for this year, but man…economy tickets to Europe for under 10k points when you catch a promo fare? I might just make up a reason to go to Europe this year.
Darn. Have platinum but no points! This is getting to be like the stock market where it’s going up but I have no money to invest
With the new changes in Gold/Silver, will you be relegated to Silver starting 2024 if you were gold but no longer meet the points due to the new requirements?
It depends on when you earned the status. If you earned it January 1-June 30, 2023, it’ll expire on January 31, 2024. If you earned it July 1-December 31, it’ll be valid throughout 2024.
awesome, thanks Stephen!
Between Flying Blue and Virgin Atlantic, which is the better option?
Good question that I also wanted to know.
Most likely Flying Blue, but it’d be worth doing some award searches ahead of January 1 to see if its pricing and availability works for you.
I’m considering a large purchase on my Bilt card. How long does it take for points to be made available after the purchase? Do you have to wait ’til statement closing or is it available within a day or two?
If you’ve met the 5 transaction per statement threshold, the points for each transaction post within a couple of days, as soon as it’s out of “pending”—you do not have to wait for your statement close. If you haven’t made 5 transactions in that statement period, the points won’t post until your 5th transaction posts as pending.