Bilt Cuts Rent Points For Most Cards—But Travel Partner Cards Could Soon Earn 3X (Like Alaska)

Bilt is adjusting points-earning for rent payments on their new feature to earn rewards paying rent with any card, for a fee.

Last month Bilt introduced the option to pay rent with any credit card, pay a fee, and earn both Bilt points and the rewards from the credit card that you use.

  • Charge rent to your Visa, Mastercard, American Express or Discover card
  • Pay 3% fee
  • Earn 1 point per dollar spent on Visa, Mastercard or Discover or 1 point per $2 spent on American Express

Effective July 21, this changes to 1 point per $2 regardless of card type. That’s an earnings devaluation, but it applies only to this new offering that just started. It does not apply to earning points for rent payments fee-free with the Bilt Mastercard, or to earning 3 miles per dollar for a 3% fee with an Alaska Visa.

They say that “later this summer” they’ll be increasing the rewards “on select cobrand cards from our travel partners” to align with the Alaska Airlines deal.

While I have no inside information on that score, it could encompass Chase United and Southwest cards (and even, perhaps, the Aeroplan card and British Airways suite… hopefully the Chase Hyatt card). Quite a few Bilt travel partners work with Chase on their cobrands. I wonder if it’ll be limited to Chase products, or if it could also include the Avianca and TAP cards from Cardless.

Meanwhile, I’m still looking forward to promised miles for mortgages – double dippable with the Mesa card which gives you points for your mortgage but doesn’t have you pay your mortgage using their card. It’ll be quite exciting if you can pay a mortgage through Bilt for rewards and earn for your mortgage with Mesa, too.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Well, it’s good that’s not happening to the actual Bilt Mastercard, because if it was, I’d be pretty pretty… pissed.

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