Bilt rent payment method is changing for many users – updates needed to continue paying rent

Bilt is currently making changes to their BillPay feature. As a result, members who live at properties outside of the Bilt network have to actively make a change in order for Bilt to continue paying their rent, a situation which certainly isn’t ideal.

The email sent out to members yesterday stated the following:

As we’ve scaled (now 1 in 4 apartment buildings nationwide) we needed a more seamless and secure payment process while building the foundation for new features – including our mortgage rewards program launching this year, and other future bill types.

Going forward, here’s how you’ll pay rent:

1. Pre-authorize your payment in the Bilt app – this will include selecting your rent amount and how you want to pay rent (Bilt Mastercard for waived fees, other cards for earning both Bilt Points and your card’s rewards like the 3X Alaska miles when using an Alaska card)NOTE: You’ll receive new BillPay by Bilt routing and account numbers the first time you do this and will need to update it in your property’s payment portal – you’ll only need to do this the first time and it needs to be done by April 29th
2. Submit your rent payment as usual through your property’s payment portal. Make sure to submit your payment within 5 days of authorizing it in the Bilt app

If you live in a building in the Bilt network or pay rent by check, there is no change to how you pay rent today. Also, there is a smaller subsection of Bilt cardholders who onboarded with us after the new backend was instituted and they also do not need to do anything. They are receiving a separate email specific to them.

This initially caused concern with many renters because they currently have their rent set up to autopay, whereas this change made it sound like they’d manually have to pay their rent every month, adding friction to the process. However, Bilt has since advised that starting from next week (the week starting March 24), members will be able to use an auto-authorize feature to autopay their rent as before.

There were concerns regarding these changes though. For example, if a renter missed Bilt’s email and so didn’t update Bilt’s routing and account number in their property’s payment portal, would this result in missed rental payments, late fees, potential eviction notices, etc.? Other renters have utilities and other bills rolled into their overall rent payments which means the amounts to be authorized each month can differ; would those be supported?

We therefore reached out to Bilt with the following questions – their answers are italicized below.

Q1) How will auto-authorize work for people who have utility (or other) bills included with their rent and so have fluctuating rent amounts each month. Will auto-authorize automatically pay the required amount? If auto-authorize will work up to a certain additional amount, what will happen if someone’s extra charge exceeds what Bilt will auto-authorize? Will that mean the member’s rent payment simply won’t be submitted to their landlord?

A) Members can authorize up to 110% of their rent amount to account for fluctuations in their monthly payment to include utilities and other charges. There is no scenario where a member will not be aware their rent was declined, both Bilt and their landlord will alert the member if they authorize for the wrong amount and the payment fails. If a payment fails, Bilt will immediately notify the member of the decline and the reason why (insufficient authorization or other reason such as their payment method declined) so the Bilt member can pay their rent. Any Bilt member who has ever reached out for rent payment issues has been helped through the process and in the event there are ever late charges or fees, Bilt has covered those for the member without hesitation. We understand the importance of housing payments and will do everything possible to ensure member’s housing payments are processed in the right manner at the right time. 

Q2) What will happen if Bilt members who currently have their rent set to autopay miss the email you sent and so don’t update their routing and account number on the property’s payment portal? It looks like they need to take active steps in order to pre-authorize their next rent payment no matter what, so if they don’t see your email for one reason or another, does that mean their rent won’t be paid? If that’s Bilt’s approach, what’s Bilt’s policy going to be regarding members’ subsequent late fees and/or eviction notices for unpaid rent?

There will be a series of successive communications ahead of the April 29th deadline for members to update their ACH information in their landlords portal. If they do not update their information, they will again receive the above communication that their rent payment failed and they need to update their ACH information. This leaves 6 weeks and two rent cycles for members to receive our communications and update their payment information. We will always ensure any members who run into problems are taken care of as we’ve always done.

Q3) On a similar note, there are services like Experian Boost where people can opt in to have their rent payments added to their credit report to improve their credit score. These Bilt changes could therefore have an impact on people’s credit score if their rent goes unpaid; that could be particularly detrimental if they’re in the process of trying to purchase a house. Does Bilt have a statement regarding this?

Bilt today already reports all on time rent payments to all three credit bureaus for free to all Bilt members who opt-in to our credit boost feature. This feature only reports on-time rent and never penalizes a member.

If you’re an affected Bilt member, it’ll still be worth checking each month to ensure payments have been submitted correctly, especially if you have utility bills added in with your rent as I imagine that could be a more likely reason for payment failure. For example, let’s say your rent is $1,250 per month. If using the auto-authorize feature, that would mean Bilt would be able to take payment for up to $1,375 to include those fluctuating bills. However, if those bills came to $125.01 or more, it sounds like the payment wouldn’t be submitted. I could certainly see there being situations where those types of bills would cost more than 10% of your rental payment. That said, I’ve not used Bilt before to pay rent and so I don’t know if this procedure is any different from how things are currently processed.

Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.