Bilt Adds Second Option for Earning Points on Rent / Mortgage

Bilt is currently sending out the following to Bilt members on the heels of its Bilt 2.0 card launches on Tuesday.

The following is an email from Bilt Founder & CEO Ankur Jain to Bilt Members.

Over the past few days, I’ve spent a lot of time reading our members’ emails, DMs, and notes. Many were thoughtful and passionate. Some were frustrated. All were fair.

I feel incredibly lucky to lead a company with members who care this deeply.

On one hand, there have been record applications for the cards, and I’m excited for members to get them. However, I’ve also seen real and reasonable confusion about the new value proposition—especially around rent and mortgage points. That’s on me, and we’re fixing it.

Let me be clear and upfront: Bilt cardholders will never be charged a fee to earn rewards on housing payments.

There’s also an important reality behind how we deliver the richest rewards possible. The more members use the card for everyday spend, the more unique value we can sustainably provide across the Bilt ecosystem. It is probably not a surprise to any of you, but if members only purchase four bananas and earn free rent points, it doesn’t allow us to sustain such a rich value proposition for everyone.

With all that in mind, we are introducing a new, simpler option to earn fee-free rewards on rent and mortgage: now up to 1.25X on each payment.

You will now be able to choose one of the two options for how you want to be rewarded on housing payments with the new Bilt Card 2.0. The core benefits of each card are not changing. This is only an update to how you earn rewards on housing payments.

Option 1:

A simple, fee-free way to earn rewards on housing.

• Pay your full rent or mortgage every month with no transaction fee

• Earn points on housing automatically in lieu of earning Bilt Cash

• The more you use your card for everyday spend, the higher your points multiplier on housing, now up to 1.25x:

You’ll see your progress to each tier clearly in the app each month.

Just like today, if you don’t hit the minimum spend requirement, you still earn 250 points per month. Bilt Card 2.0 also removes the 100,000 rent point cap that existed with Card 1.0, so you can now earn unlimited points on housing payments.

Option 2:

If you prefer the original, fee-free structure we launched Card 2.0 with, it’s still available for you:

• Earn 4% back in Bilt Cash on everyday purchases, in addition to base points. Think of Bilt Cash as “choose your own reward”.

• Pay your full rent or mortgage every month with no transaction fee

• You can use as little or as much of your Bilt Cash to increase the total points you earn on housing that month and you do not ever pay anything out of pocket.

• You can also redeem Bilt Cash dollar-for-dollar for monthly credits across the Bilt ecosystem (with monthly, merchant-specific caps), or for exclusive benefits like higher transfer bonuses and special access to experiences.

My Take

In my initial article on the cards, I did lament the lack of simplicity and opined that not having Bilt Cash (and therefore no “opportunity cost” to spend for rent payments vs other uses like the travel portal) would have been cleaner.

in this new option you can do exactly that AND get even more than 1X if you can spend more than your monthly rent on the card.

That said, in this rollout, you still have the option for Bilt Cash (and how could they take that away after 2 days?) so there is still an opportunity cost. And I still think that in high cost of living areas, getting to even 75% of your rent or mortgage could be really tough – even if that is where the card’s economics landed things to be profitable.

Links to Apply

We have all three cards on Your Best Credit Cards:

• Bilt Palladium
• Bilt Obsidian
• Bilt Blue

Thoughts?

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