Mesa is a tech platform that offers a mortgage marketplace and a credit card that earns up to 100,000 points per year for mortgage payments. Bilt Rewards has been foreshadowing the ability to earn rewards on mortgage payments for some time, but Mesa actually beat them there.
Mesa doesn’t even require cardholders to use its platform to pay their mortgage in order to earn points. You simply need to let them know what your payment is when you apply and then spend $1,000 each month on the card. The rewards from your mortgage payment will then be credited to your account after your statement closes each month that you meet the spending requirement.
Gary over at View from the Wing wrote about this card back in December when it was on a waitlist, but it’s now open for applications, so we took a closer look at it. It’s an interesting card, even more so since the points that it earns can now be transferred to a limited set of travel partners.
In addition to earning rewards on mortgages and having interesting bonus spend categories, it also provides up to $700 in statement credits. For the right person, this could be a terrific, no-annual-fee proposition.
Key Card Details
For more card information and to find an application link, see our dedicated card page by clicking the name of the cards below.
| Card Offer and Details |
|---|
 ⓘ $0 1st Yr Value EstimateClick to learn about first year value estimates None Non-AffiliateThis is NOT an affiliate offer. We always present the best offer even when it means less revenue for Frequent Miler There is currently no welcome offer for this cardNo Annual Fee Information about this card has been collected independently by Frequent Miler. The issuer did not provide the details, nor is it responsible for their accuracy. FM Mini Review: Interesting card for the ability to earn transferable points with mortgage payments, especially if you can use one or more of the spending perks. Earning rate: 3x on home improvement, decor, maintenance, utilities, and daycare ✦ 2x on groceries, gas, and EV charging ✦ 1x on mortgage payments when spending $1k/month on card ✦ 1x everywhere else Base: 1% Gas: 2% Grocery: 2% Other: 3% Card Info: Visa Signature issued by Celtic. This card has no foreign currency conversion fees. Noteworthy perks: $120 yearly statement credit for Wag! and Farmers Dog purchases ✦ $200 yearly statement credit for Thumbtack purchases ✦ $120 yearly statement credit for Lowes purchases ($30 per quarter) |
Mesa Homeowners Card Review
Obviously, the big feather in the Homeowner’s card’s fedora is the ability to earn points on mortgage payments without paying a fee, something that isn’t possible with any other product right now (unless you happen to have a mortgage provider that accepts CC payments and doesn’t charge a fee). But there’s other interesting features as well, including 3x earning on daycare payments and home improvement spending and hundreds of dollars of statement credits annually that include Lowes and warehouse club memberships…for no annual fee.
The points aren’t terribly valuable, at least until the transfer partners improve. But even Finnair and Accor could pack enough punch to make this an appealing card for homeowners.
- Annual Fee: $0
- Authorized User Annual Fee: Free
- Foreign Transaction Fee: None
- What points are worth: Points are worth 1 cent each towards booking travel through Mesa’s portal, ~.75 cents each when buying gift card or 0.5 cents each when redeemed for statements credits. They can also be transferred to one of six travel partners (supposedly, more will be added soon).
- Best Use for Points: Mesa points can be transferred to Air India, Finnair, Hainan Airways, Thai Airways and Vietnam Airlines at a 1:1 ratio. The only hotel partner is Accor, which carries a 1:5 to 1 ratio. Accor points are worth 2 Euro cents each, so the transfer ratio essentially means that Mesa points are worth ~1.5 cents each towards Accor Hotels. Finnair is by far the best of the initial airline partners, especially since Avios can be transferred between the various programs that use it.
- Earning Categories:
- 3x Home improvement, decor, maintenance, utilities, and daycare
- 2X Groceries, gas and EV charging
- 1x Mortgage payments (provided that you spend $1K/month on the card)
- 1x Everywhere else
- Credits:
- $200 annual Thumbtack (home maintenance and cleaning)
- $120 annual Wag! (pet care)
- $120 annual The Farmer’s Dog (pet food)
- $120 annual Lowe’s Credit ($30 per quarter)
- $100 Armadillo Home Warranty
- $65 toward $65 Big Box Membership (warehouse clubs)
- Travel Protections:
- None that I could find.
- Purchase Protections:
- None that I could find.
- Who’s this card for? Pretty much anyone with a mortgage. 3x earning on daycare would be another strong (and unique) carrot for many folks.
- Is the Mesa Homeowners Card a keeper? Once Bilt finally launches the ability to earn points on mortgage payments, this card could lose some luster. In the meantime, this seems like a keeper, especially if you can take advantage of some of the statement credits (and provided those statement credits stick around).
Mesa Homeowners Card Pros and Cons
Pros
- Free way to earn points on mortgage payments
- 3x categories are interesting, especially daycare for those that use it
- Impressive list of credits for a no annual fee card
- Points can be redeemed for statement credits if you don’t want to hassle with transferring to the small array partners (although, at poor value)
Cons
- The value of the points isn’t great outside of transferring to partners
- Besides Finnair and Accor, the transfer partners aren’t very good
- No travel or purchase protections
- No welcome offer
- Points are only worth 0.5 cents each when redeeming for statement credits
- Have to spend $1K per month on the card in non-mortgage payments in order to earn points on mortgage payments
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
No signup bonus, but assuming a $3k mortgage, you could treat this as a 4x everywhere (and up to 5x or 6x in the bonus categories) card if you only spent $1k/month.
This can be higher or lower depending on what your actual mortgage payment is.
Continuing with the $3k mortgage example, let’s say you spent $1k/month entirely in groceries & gas, since that is a fairly easy category. You’d get 5,000 points/month. You could think of it like a credit card bonus of 60,000 points for $12k spend over the year.
Most credit card bonuses work out to be 10x or more and are superior to this.
The 100k point/year cap works out to an $8,333.33 mortgage. So that’s the absolute best this card can get. Assuming $1k/month spent on groceries and gas again, you’d earn 124,000 points for $12k spend over the course of the year.
I’d still rather churn.
It’s worth mentioning that I didn’t factor any of the statement credits into what I wrote above. They do matter, but I’d be a lot more enticed if I had a larger mortgage payment to make, and if I weren’t as worried about potential nerfs around the corner (my speculation entirely).
If there are no conditions on the credits (which I agree can’t last long), then this is possibly the best value proposition among no-annual-fee, no-spend cards with basically a free $185 per year for a Costco membership and Lowe’s supplies. If we were still at a daycare that accepted credit cards with a 3 percent fee, then it’d make sense to put daycare on this card to effectively pay 1 cent per Avios and unlock points from mortgage. It’d be nice if Mesa supported more than one mortgage per card, but it makes sense why they don’t.
FYI review all of the 3x categories (namely property taxes, contractors, and insurance):
“ Three Points (1 base point plus 2 bonus points) are earned per $1 spent on Qualifying Purchases at retailers whose merchant code for Visa is classified as Home Decor, Home Improvement, General Contractors, Cable & Streaming Services, Home Insurance, Property Taxes, Maintenance, Telecom, Utilities and daycare. ”
Wonder if that includes doggy daycare.
Seems like a decent deal, particularly if you have >= $1000 of 3x spend. The only drawback is that the only useful currency for me would be Avios. So a mortgage of $3K per month + $1K of 3x spend per month would provide a steady 72K points per year.
“You simply need to let them know what your payment is when you apply and then spend $1,000 each month on the card. The rewards from your mortgage payment will then be credited to your account after your statement closes each month that you meet the spending requirement.”
This makes me wonder if you could double-dip using both this card and the Bilt card (if Bilt ever actually supports mortgage payments)? That might make it an even sweeter deal! 😉
You don’t really “earn” points by paying on your mortgage, you get those points without using your Mesa card to pay it, as long as you spend 1K elsewhere.
Feels like they’re burning through investors’ cash trying to build up a portfolio to be sold to some bank that might be able to do something with it. Seems more likely to collapse in a few months.
The requirement to spend $1k/month makes this not too attractive to me. I don’t have a ton of spend and usually need to direct my spend to SUBs. The benefits are good, though, and I could squeeze 100-300/yr from them, but I don’t know if they will last long-term so it’s not worth the 5/24 slot for me.
I feel like I’m the target audience for this card with roughly $4000+/ month between daycare and my mortgage. But the lack of uses for the points makes it tough. And I’m not in the market for anymore gift cards. Anyone else?
What about if your daycare only takes ACH payment, they don’t have a similar platform to Bilt that will facilitate that so we know?