I love the Rakuten shopping portal because it regularly offers great deals (in fact, as I write this, they’re offering 10%/10x at many merchants via their “Big Stack” event), great signup bonuses (currently they’re offering 5K points or $50), and, best of all, they allow you to earn rewards as cash back or Amex Membership Rewards points. I earn a ton of Membership Rewards points this way! Now, it appears that they have accidentally leaked the news that they may be offering Bilt Rewards as an additional option! If this happens and they provide the same 1-to-1 payout as with Amex, this would be amazing!
User awardtravel, on Reddit, appears to have been the first to report that Rakuten was showing an option to earn Bilt Rewards points. Then, Doctor of Credit captured the above screenshot. The Bilt option has since been removed from the site.
Bilt Rewards points are probably the single most valuable points for transferring to airline and hotel partners. They support a fantastic array of airline programs, including one-to-one transfers to Alaska Atmos, JAL, Avios, Aeroplan, Flying Blue, Southwest, United, and more. Additionally, on the hotel front, they offer one-to-one transfers to Hyatt!
The problem with Bilt Rewards is that unless you spend a lot on rent, it has been hard to earn Bilt points in large numbers. If this Rakuten thing pans out, though, that will quickly change. I know that I’ll change my Rakuten earnings from Membership Rewards to Bilt!
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I wonder if the transfer ratio will be based on your BILT status…
ask Richard if it is true
Do you have to have the bilt card to do this? Or just a Bilt rewards account?
You would (almost certainly) not need a Bilt card to do this.
Yay!
RIP Hyatt. Game over Chase.
This is my concern, if it does happen the way we think and without some kind of devaluation or less than 1:1 transfer from Rakuten to BILT, then Hyatt is gonna be devalued with the influx of transfers and redemptions. Same with Atmos. I do hate how difficult it is to earn those points because of the exclusivity with Chase, BoA, and BILT, it’s one of the main reasons they’re still so valuable.
Rounding to the nearest whole decimal point the number of people using both Rakuten and Bilt, taking Rakuten as points instead of cash, and transferring their points from Bilt to Hyatt, will add 0% to the number of Hyatt points in circulation.
Larry you are not wholly wrong but you’re also definitely not fully right (though I wish you were). You definitely underestimate the (relatively) few whales in the points/miles game who would absolutely churn this method for Hyatt/Atmos points. Because I am definitely one of them, and I know there’s *enough* out there to make a dent and accelerate the path to a devaluation from Hyatt/Atmos. It doesn’t require a majority percentage of people to make Hyatt/Atmos notice. Honestly even without the large transfers, just the mere pathway for AMEX to Hyatt/Atmos would probably incite some sort of negative change in the programs. Even if it doesn’t happen immediately, it certainly has a negative effect and I’m not sure how you can deny that
How does Rakuten adding Bilt create a pathway for Amex to Hyatt/Atmos?
If these points count towards Bilt status, this is incredible.
I used to be a huge fan of Bilt but for those not paying rent, the program cuts were brutal. They reduced Rent Day to 2x on only $1000 and you can’t use tax payments anymore. Plus, you need to go through the hoop of 5 transactions per month. Contrast with Citi, where I now earn 2x on everything and can transfer to American Airlines and multiple others. I used to pay all my internet/cell/cable bills on Rent Day, but now that I can earn 3x on those through Wells Fargo Autograph, wondering if Bilt is still worth it.
Hi, Greg. The Amex MR points via Rakuten are great—especially during stacking events like what’s going on now.! My knowledge of Bilt is very limited. My question to you is why would you change how you get paid from Amex MR points to BILT points?? Is it that much better than Amex for transfer partners and Hyatt? Thanking you in advance for your response and enlightenment!!
Bilt has the best selection of transfer partners, including Alaska and Hyatt. They also have the most amazing transfer bonuses if you’re able to maintain status.
Exactly as Larry wrote. Example: Nick recently posted about great sweet spot awards bookable with JAL and Bilt is the only program that offers 1 to 1 transfers to JAL
Thanks for the clarification!
This is stellar. I’ll absolutely be switching from MR to Bilt and likely shifting a good amount of my portal spend in general from airline portals (primarily AA, used for status).
This sounds too good to be true…
All the bloggers have stopped talking about Bilt because they’ve lied for years about mortgages and they’ve needed some press. Any press is good press. Get someone to fake this image with AI and all the blogs start talking about us again. Glad to see you guys are back talking about them
they have said an announcement is literally coming this fall lol. if that doesn’t pan out then fair to criticize but theyve been honest the whole time about 2.0 refresh/working on this
This option shows up under the “Help” part of the website, but nowhere else, so it is clearly coming and was just posted too quickly.