Bilt Mastercard

Card Details and Application Link

Bilt Mastercard       ⓘ $0 1st Yr Value Estimate None This card features no welcome bonus, but it offers the chance to earn 1x points when paying rent (on up to $50K per year in rent payments) with no annual fee. Click Here to Apply No Annual Fee     FM Mini Review: If you pay rent and haven't been earning rewards, this card is a no-brainer as you can pay your rent and earn rewards with no fee. A surprisingly good set of transfer partners makes the rewards for using this for rent worth getting the card for that main purpose alone (as long as you remember to use the card 5 times per month). Card Type: Mastercard World Elite Base 1X (1.55%) Travel 2X (3.1%) Dine 3X (4.65%) Earning rate: Must use your card for 5 purchases per month, then: 3x Dining ⚬ 2x Travel ⚬ 1x rent (up to 50,000 points per year) ⚬ 1x everywhere else Noteworthy perks: Transfer points 1 to 1 to airline and hotel programs (including American Airlines, United, Hyatt, Aeroplan, and more) ⚬ Redeem points for 1.25 cents each towards travel booked through Bilt's travel portal ⚬ Cell phone insurance ⚬ No fee to pay rent and earn rewards See also: Read more about Bilt's recent improvements here.

Bilt Rewards is the core program in which you can earn points by paying your rent and/or using the Bilt Mastercard. It’s a program that’s designed to enable those who rent their homes to earn points on the rent. This makes the program and associated card unique in offering an easy way to earn points on what is the probably the largest monthly expenditure for those living in many markets.

There are several ways to earn and redeem Bilt Rewards points as a Mastercard-holder, each is covered below.

How to earn Bilt Rewards points

Paying Rent: Pay by card, check, or ACH transfer.

Even if your landlord doesn’t accept a credit card, Bilt Mastercard cardholders can pay rent via check or ACH and still earn 1x points on rent (up to 50,000 points per year). Whether you pay by check, ACH, or with your Bilt Mastercard, you’ll pay your rent through the Bilt app (or use the app to generate ACH account information that can be copied into your online rent payment portal). This makes it very easy for most people to earn 1 point per dollar spent on rent (up to 50,000 points per year). Keep in mind that you’ll need to make 5 total transactions per month with the Bilt Mastercard in order to earn points, so be sure to use it for more than just the rent.

In the Bilt Rewards app, cardholders have the option to send a rent payment by mailing a check or by ACH transfer using ClickPay, RentCafe, or other online payment portals.

Linking Rewards Programs to Bilt

Bilt Rewards offers 100 points for every loyalty program you link to your Bilt Rewards account. This represents very low-hanging fruit for most members.

Note that Bilt has occasionally run promotions with increased incentives for linking specific programs. For instance, in April 2022, Bilt offered 500 points for linking an American Airlines AAdvantage account and in May 2022 Bilt offered 500 points for linking a World of Hyatt account. Both of those promotions have since expired, but it is worth keeping your eye out for future promotions if you have not yet linked all of your loyalty accounts.

Using the Bilt Mastercard

The Bilt Mastercard offers rewards in the form of Bilt Rewards points as shown above so long as you use your card for at least 5 transactions per month. If you do not use your card for at least 5 transactions per month, you will not earn points based on your card activity.

2x travel, 3x dining

The Bilt Mastercard offers two bonus categories: 2x travel and 3x dining. While those multipliers do not put it at the top of our list of best category bonuses, they represent good return for a no annual fee card that earns points that can be directly transferred to partners.

Assuming you can meet the minimum transaction requirements, the return on dining and travel spend is respectable for a card with no annual fee given Bilt’s very strong set of transfer partners and even more so when you consider that points can be used not only to transfer to partners but also to book travel at a value of 1.25c per point through Bilt’s portal. While booking through a travel portal won’t always make sense (you need to shop rates), the added flexibility is nice for times when the portal is price-competitive.

1x everywhere else

Unfortunately, the Bilt mastercard does not offer a strong earning rate on everyday spend at just 1x for most purchases, nor does it offer a public introductory bonus. We recently saw a targeted offer where some were targeted for 10,000 points after $1,000 in purchases. In the first 90 days. Those targeted received an email with a personalized link.

Where the card really shines is in offering 1x on rent payments — even if your landlord does not accept a credit card. That’s because cardholders gain the ability to pay not only landlords in the Bilt alliance but any landlord by sending a check or by ACH transfer as outlined above in this guide.

Earning 1 point per dollar on most purchases is not a good return on spend. That said, if you would not otherwise earn points for paying your rent, the overall math may work out well for those looking for a single long-term card. For instance, if you generally have $1500 per month in expenses paid by credit card and you also pay $2,000 per month in rent, you would earn at least 3,500 points per month with the Bilt Mastercard and possibly more if any of those purchases are in bonus categories (assuming you make at least 5 transactions). If you would have alternatively put those $1500 in monthly purchases on a card that earns 2x everywhere and not earned points on rent, you would only earn 3,000 points per month. You could earn far more points by focusing your spend toward excellent credit card welcome bonuses, but the Bilt Mastercard can be a reasonable choice for someone who rents and is looking for a single no-annual-fee credit card.

Bilt has run some spending promotions like 5x everywhere for Black Friday with Bilt Rewards card last year. It’s worth keeping an eye out for similar promotions.

Bilt “Rent Day” 

For a 24-hour period on the 1st of each calendar month, Bilt offers a promotion called “Rent Day” where members with the Bilt Mastercard earn double points on all non-rent purchases. Not only does this make the base earning rate 2x, it also doubles existing bonus categories, meaning that cardholders earn 6x dining and 4x travel. (but for one day only). That makes the first of the month a great day to buy a gift card at your favorite restaurant or to book pending travel (though it would likely be harder to plan that specifically for the first of the month given the fluidity of pricing).

Your earnings potential on Rent Day isn’t infinite: you can earn up to 10,000 maximum bonus points on rent day. Still, that’s a fairly high ceiling given that it would take $3,333.34 or more in dining purchases to exceed the 10K bonus point cap (or $10K in non-bonused purchases).

It’s also worth pointing out that you still only earn 1x on rent. The double rewards is for non-rent purchases only. In that regard, remember that you need to make 5 non-rent purchases per month in order to earn 1x on the rent. This double rewards deal on the first of the month should make it increasingly easy for cardholders to meet that threshold.

Bilt also runs additional promotions on Rent Day, in addition to the increased earnings. So far, offers that we’ve seen have included a transfer bonus to IHG One Rewards, a monthly rent giveaway, free SoulCycle classes and even a “Points Quest” trivia contest.

Referring friends to Bilt Mastercard

Bilt offers a referral program for the Mastercard, but the normal rates aren’t stellar. For each person you successfully refer, you get 2,500 points. Every 5th successful referral gets you an additional 10,000 points – up to 2 million bonus points. You can find your referral code by tapping the invite button in the app.

Note that you do not need to be a card holder in order to refer friends to the Bilt MasterCard.

How to use Bilt Rewards points

Transfer Bilt Rewards points to airline and hotel partners

Bilt has a very unique set of transfer partner that make the program surprisingly strong. Points transfer 1:1 to partners, with most transfers occurring near instantly for all partners but American Airlines AAdvantage (which transfer once per day). Partner programs can provide opportunities for far outsized value. See our Bilt Rewards sweet spots post for full details on the best redemption opportunities.

Partners include:

Hotels

Airlines

Current Transfer Bonuses

If Bilt Rewards is running any transfer bonuses, details will appear here:

Use Bilt Points to pay for travel at 1.25c per point

Bilt now offers the ability to use points at a value of 1.25 cents per point when booking travel through their new travel portal. The portal is baked into the Bilt app (simply select the “Travel” tab) or members can browse to: travel.biltrewards.com.

Like many other travel portals, Bilt’s portal is powered by Expedia. This means that most flights will probably be the same price that you can find elsewhere, but rental cars, hotels, and activities may cost a bit more. Still, this can be a good way to get decent value for points when booking hotels or certain experiences (like tickets for Disney World).

One really cool feature is only available through the Bilt app. When searching for flights, you can choose to search through the Bilt Portal for cash rates or through a selection of their airline partners to see award rates for the same dates and destination. This should make it easier for people to decide whether to use their points through the portal or by transferring to partners. At the moment, only American Airlines AAdvantage, Air Canada Aeroplan, and United MileagePlus are supported, but I’m guessing that Bilt will add more partners soon.

If you don’t have enough points to cover an entire charge, you can pay in part with points and the remainder in cash.

While you can often get far more value by transferring points to airline and hotel programs, the ability to alternatively get decent value when redeeming for travel directly is a strength for those who don’t intend to learn the intricacies of booking award flights using airline miles.

Redeem points for rent

Bilt allows you to redeem points for rent. The value here is very poor as you will get less than 1c per point. If you intend to use credit card rewards to pay for rent, you would likely be better off with a credit card that earns 2% cash back everywhere and using that cash back toward your rent.

Redeem points for fitness classes

Bilt has partnerships with several popular exercise class brands, so you can redeem your points for popular classes like Soul Cycle, Rumble boxing, Solidcore, and Y7. These redemptions generally don’t provide maximum value.

Redeem points for art, home décor and more

Bilt offers the Bilt Collection, a curated selection of limited-edition art and home décor. Redemptions start at 5,000 points. Whether or not these redemptions make sense is a matter of personal taste.

Use points to cover Amazon purchases

You can use Bilt Rewards points at checkout to cover purchases at Amazon.com. This yields very poor value for points at 0.7c per point and should be avoided.

Bilt Rewards elite status

Bilt Rewards offers an elite status program that offers the chance to earn interest on rewards points among other benefits.

The ability to earn interest based on your points balance is available to those with Silver status or higher. Status is earned based on total points earned over a calendar year as follows:

• Blue – anyone enrolled in Bilt Rewards with under 25,000 points
• Silver – 25,000 points earned
• Gold – 50,000 points earned
• Platinum – 100,000 points earned

You will need to have earned 25K points in a calendar year (Silver status) to earn interest on your points balance. Those 25K points can come from any type of spend — meaning that in addition to the points you earn for paying your rent, dining and travel spend will accelerate your pace up the status tiers.

Benefits as you move up status tiers include:

• Silver and higher
  • Earn interest in the form of points to a member’s Bilt Rewards account every month based on average daily points balance for each 30-day period (rate is based on the FDIC published national savings rate)
  • Bilt will deposit up to 50% bonus points on top of points issued by landlords to
    members for signing for new tenant leases and lease renewal., depending on
    member status.
• Gold and higher
  • Bilt Homeownership Concierge: Members who redeem Bilt Points toward a home down payment can get help from a dedicated concierge who will walk the member through the home buying process
• Platinum
  • Members will receive a complimentary gift from the Bilt Collection (apparently some type of home decor / art)