My experience as a Bilt authorized user

Bilt is not a great rewards ecosystem for someone who is primarily interested in sharing their points. On our most recent coffee break episode, we covered which programs are better for that purpose. However, Bilt does have an innovative feature whereby they allow a primary cardholder to designate whether an authorized user’s purchases should earn points and/or Bilt cash for the primary card member or for the authorized user.

My wife recently added me as an authorized user on her Bilt Palladium card. The process was a little unintuitive to get started, but now that we’ve gotten in the flow, it has provided some interesting insight into why this might be a useful opportunity.

Why add an authorized user?

My wife had the Bilt 1.0 card and converted to Bilt Palladium after the Bilt 2.0 launch. I have tried applying for the Bilt Palladium card, but have not been approved (despite being approved for cards with Amex, Chase, Barclays, and Comenity so far this year).

That could be for the best; we didn’t need two Palladium cards. Since I primarily earn our Rakuten points in my Rakuten account, I really wanted to have Bilt elite status so that my Rakuten points convert at a 1:1 ratio. I am also the person who handles most of the award bookings in our household, so being able to take advantage of a Bilt elite member transfer bonus seems more advantageous in my account than in my wife’s account.

Furthermore, I’m more likely to test out opportunities with Bilt cash, so it made more sense for me to earn Bilt points and also build up a stash of Bilt cash and status with Bilt. Therefore, my wife paid the $95 authorized user fee to add me as an authorized user on her Palladium account.

Adding an authorized user to a Bilt account was slow and unintuitive

The process of adding an authorized user initially seems simple and intuitive enough. You simply provide that user’s email address and personal information in order to send them an invitation.

My wife did this about a month ago. For some reason, the invitation did not immediately come through to my email. In her account, I showed up as an authorized user, but it clearly said that the invitation was “unsent”. I gave it a day or two, and it still said that the invitation was unsent and I hadn’t received it. I obviously checked my spam folder and promotions tab. Meanwhile, on the third day after adding me, my wife received an email reminding her to have her authorized user accept the invitation.

Of course, since I hadn’t received the invitation, it was impossible for me to accept. Clicking the “get invite link” didn’t do anything notable.

On Reddit, I found a tip suggesting that she edit the authorized user email address and then edit it back to the correct address in order to trigger the invitation email. Unfortunately, that didn’t work. Bilt threw an error saying that the address couldn’t be edited.

She chatted with Bilt support, which told her to call Cardless. Instead of calling Cardless, she tried deleting me as an authorized user and re-adding me as an authorized user. Unfortunately, that still didn’t trigger the invitation immediately.

I had resigned myself to the fact that she was going to have to call Cardless, but it wasn’t at the top of our to-do list. On day 5 after adding me as an AU, I received the email invitation to accept being added as an AU.

The moral of the story here is that you might need to be patient for that invitation to come through. We had been hoping to get the authorized user account added and perhaps get an instant card number in order to make a specific purchase, but that didn’t happen in time. Don’t wait until the last minute if you want to add an authorized user.

Accepting the authorized user invitation was simple enough. I had to click the email and log in to my Bilt account in order to accept the invitation (which required getting a code sent to the email address, which was a pain because I was still in gmail in the process of logging in, so it helped to have a second device). It soon thereafter showed the last four digits of a card number, though I couldn’t receive a full instant card number. I had to wait to receive the physical card in the mail a day or two later.

Choosing where to credit points / Bilt Cash

On the day when my physical card arrived, my wife had the ability within her account to choose where to earn rewards for purchases made on the authorized user card.

Interestingly, she has the option to choose whether to credit points to her account or her authorized user account and to separately choose to credit Bilt Cash to her account or to the authorized user account.

We decided to credit both points and Bilt Cash to my account, but it’s interesting to know that the two rewards currencies can be divided. I imagine there are some situations where maybe you would want to credit those separately, perhaps if you’re adding a college-age student who’s renting and you want them to earn some rewards (in the form of Bilt Cash) but to keep the points in your primary account (or I’m sure there may be other reasons).

In our case, I wanted to build up some Bilt cash to use toward paying up for a transfer bonus if and when the opportunity presents itself. We chose to credit both points and Bilt cash to my account.

Meanwhile, I switched the default tap-to-pay card in both my and my wife’s Google Pay accounts to my authorized user card so that all of the in-person purchases both she and I make by tapping our phones also credit the points and Bilt cash to my Bilt account.

Bilt authorized user must activate their own accelerator

Bilt offers Obsidian and Palladium cardholders the option to use $200 in Bilt Cash to enable a “points accelerator”, which adds +1 Bilt point per dollar spent on up to $5,000 in purchases (until $5K in purchases are made or December 31, 2026, whichever is sooner). A cardholder can enable the accelerator up to 5 times per calendar year. That effectively means that a Palladium cardholder could earn 3X on up to a total of $25K in purchases per year.

One of the most interesting early learnings for me was the fact that even though my wife had an accelerator enabled, I did not earn three points per dollar on the purchases on my authorized user card. I quickly realized that as an authorized user, I need to activate my own points accelerator in order to accelerate the earnings on the authorized user card. In hindsight, it makes sense that the rewards on the authorized user card are treated entirely independently since they can be credited to the authorized user’s Bilt account. Still, I hadn’t anticipated that I would need to enable my own accelerator. Furthermore, my wife could not use her Bilt Cash to enable an accelerator on my card. I needed my own $200 in Bilt Cash to activate a points accelerator.

Sadly, I didn’t have any Bilt cash when she first added me, so the first $5,000 in purchases would be without a points accelerator at just 2x. We could have alternatively made that $5,000 in purchases on my wife’s primary user card with an accelerator enabled and earned three points per dollar, so there was an opportunity cost to spending $5K on my authorized user card without an accelerator. Still, I ultimately wanted the rewards and elite status, so I spent on my authorized user card at 2X.

After spending $5,000 on the authorized user card, I had earned $200 in Bilt cash and was able to activate my own accelerator for future purchases. An interesting note here: the authorized user gets their own points accelerators, which means they get a separate 5 accelerators from the 5 accelerators for the primary card holder. In other words, we knew that primary cardholders would get up to 5 points accelerators per year. What I learned here is that as an authorized user, I get my own separate 5 point accelerators even though it’s the same primary account. After spending $5,000, I was able to redeem $200 in Bilt Cash to activate the first of 5 potential points accelerators for the year.

I find that particularly interesting for very big spenders. This means that if we had very high expenses, it would be possible for my wife to use 5 points accelerators per year (boosting up to $25K in total purchases) and, with me as an authorized user, we could get another 5 points accelerators per year on my authorized user card, earning three points per dollar on a total of $50,000 worth of household purchases in a calendar year. Since the authorized users presumably start with zero dollars in Bilt cash, that means that the authorized user will need to spend $5,000 at 2x per dollar spent in order to get the ball rolling on the accelerators. You’ll actually spend a total of $55,000 in a year in order to earn 155,000 points. That’s a pretty good return on unbonus spend. Keep in mind that with $25,000 in purchases on each card, both of you would earn Bilt Gold status, which is good for some excellent transfer bonuses when they run a rent day transfer bonus.

As an authorized user, my spend is counting toward my Bilt status

Of key importance to me was whether or not my spending on the authorized user card would count toward my elite status with Bilt. I wanted to earn Silver status before the August Rakuten payment so that my Rakuten points would convert at 1:1.

I’m happy to confirm that my spending on the card has indeed counted toward my status. I’ve already surpassed $5,000 spent on the fast track and have more than 10,000 points toward the point-based metric, showing that my credit card spend (as an authorized user) is counting toward my own elite status.

I don’t know whether it is possible for the primary cardholder to earn credit toward elite status based on authorized user spend. I would assume that if the rewards were being credited to the primary cardholder’s account, the spend would likely count toward elite status for the primary cardholder, but I can’t confirm.

Better strategies with “Player 1” as the primary account holder

Our setup isn’t ideal. In an ideal world, I would be the primary Palladium cardholder (since I am the household “Player 1”, also known as the person most interested in earning and redeeming rewards).

Here’s how I think I would ideally play things, assuming that we had chosen to earn Bilt Cash rather than rewards on housing payments, and that we had very high household expenses:

• Primary Palladium cardholder uses the $200 in annual Bilt Cash (Palladium card benefit) to enable a points accelerator to boost their first $5K in primary cardholder purchases to 3X, earning 15K points and $200 in Bilt Cash after $5K spend.
• Primary Palladium cardholder then proceeds to use $200 in Bilt Cash to boost the next $5K in purchases for each of the 5 possible accelerators, earning a total of 75K points on $25K in boosted purchasre
• After $25K in total accelerated purchases, Primary Palladium cardholder would have earned 75K points and have $350 in Bilt Cash remaining (This includes the $200 in Bilt Cash earned on the fifth $5K in purchases, plus $50 in Bilt Cash for every 25K Bilt points earned). This Bilt Cash can be used for other Bilt Cash redemptions.
• Next, Primary Palladium Cardholder would have their authorized user (Authorized User 1) begin spending to earn Bilt Cash. Primary Palladium Cardholder would choose to have the Bilt Points earned in Primary Palladium Cardholder’s Bilt account but have the Bilt Cash earned in Authorized User 1’s account. This is because Authorized User 1 needs their own Bilt Cash for accelerators.
• After Authorized User 1’s first $5K in purchases, Primary Palladium Cardholder will have earned 10,000 points (at 2X) and Authorized User 1 will have earned $200 in Bilt Cash.
• Authorized User 1 could redeem $200 in Bilt Cash for a points accelerator, boosing the next $5K in purchases to 3X (earned in Primary Palladium Cardholder’s account).
• Authorized User 1 would repeat the process for 4 total Points Accelerators, earning up to 60K points on $20K in boosted spend (with the points going to Primary Palladium Cardholder).
• After activating Authorized User 1’s fifth and final Points Accelerator, Primary Palladium Cardholder should switch the Bilt Cash earning preference back to earning Bilt Cash in Primary Palladium Cardholder’s account, so both points and Bilt Cash from Authorized User 1’s final $5K in boosted purchases post to the Primary cardholder. This is because Authorized User 1 can not enable another accelerator after completing the fifth block, so the $200 in Bilt Cash that will be earned from this spend is likely more useful in the Primary cardholder’s account.
• After a total of $55K in purchases ($25K in 3X purchases for the Primary cardholder + $5K for Authorized User 1 to earn Bilt Cash for the first accelerator + $25K in 3X purchases for the Authorized User):
  • Primary Palladium Cardholder would have 160K Bilt points
  • Primary Palladium Cardholder would have $700 in Bilt Cash ($200 from Authorized User 1’s final $5K in boosted purchases + $200 from Primary cardholder’s final $5K in boosted purchases + $300 in Bilt Cash from earning $50 for every 25K points earned)

Perhaps the best strategy would be to have the Authorized User get the Bilt Obsidian card and make their first $5K in purchases in the Obsidian card’s 3X bonus category, earning both 15K points and the $200 in Bilt Cash necessary to enable an accelerator on either the AU card or their Obsidian card.

I don’t know that my wife and I will have enough spend on our Bilt cards this year to max things out, but it is interesting to think that if we did, we could earn an excellent return and potentially stack it all in the primary cardholder’s account. The above plan would position the primary cardholder to use leftover Bilt Cash to buy up furing a transfer bonus or toward other Bilt Cash redemptions.

I assume that if the points are accrued in the primary cardholder’s account, that spend would count toward elite status for the primary cardholder. However, I don’t know that to be a certainty. If I am correct, the primary cardholder would be $20K in spend short of reaching Bilt Platinum status.

To be clear, a household could earn far more points by opening multiple credit cards and spreading that $55K in purchases over multiple cards to earn new cardmember bonuses. Spending this way on Bilt cards certainly isn’t better than opening multiple credit cards. However, the ongoing return is solid for purchases that would otherwise be unbonused.

Bottom line

My wife recently added me as an authorized her on her Bilt Palladium account. It took longer than expected to get me added, but once we got things rolling, we were excited to learn that I would get my own separate points boosts, though I needed to earn my own Bilt Cash to enable them. Our setup isn’t ideal, but I’m glad to be focusing Bilt points and status earn in my account even as a Bilt authorized user.

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