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Bilt gets a lot of attention for its credit cards. They had a rocky roll out and I think people undervalue those as a result.
The Bilt Palladium Card (See rates and fees) has a $495 annual fee and earns 2X points on everyday spending.
If you’re maximizing the value proposition of spending alongside housing payments, it can earn 3.3 Bilt Points per dollar on most of your spending. I’ve ever written how to turn this into a 4x on everything card. And I’ve then taken advantage of 100% and even 125% transfer bonuses to their partners. No card can match this, which is why it’s the primary card that I use for spending (when I’m not trying to earn another card’s initial bonus).
But you don’t need a Bilt Rewards credit card to earn points in the program or transfer them to partners. Just joining the program lets you earn points on Dining (their own bespoke partnerships plus Rewards Network restaurants); Lyft; Walgreens; fitness bookings (SoulCycle, Y7, CorePower Yoga, Barry’s, AKT, BFT, CycleBar, Pure Barre, Row House, Rumble Boxing, and YogaSix); travel portal (even earn a point per dollar on flights); Rakuten shopping portal; BLADE; Metropolis parking; GoPuff and more.
Bilt has the most – and best – transfer partners overall:
- Star Alliance: Air Canada Aeroplan, Turkish Miles & Smiles, United Airlines MileagePlus, Avianca LifeMiles, TAP Air Portugal Miles&Go
- oneworld: Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, Iberia Plus, British Airways Club, Japan Airlines Mileage Bank, Qatar Airways Privilege Club
- SkyTeam: Air France KLM Flying Blue, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
- Non-alliance: Emirates Skywards, Southwest Airlines, Aer Lingus Aer Club
- Hotels: World Of Hyatt, IHG One Rewards, Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors, Accor ALL – Accor Live Limitless, Wyndham Rewards
A lot of people live in apartments where Bilt processes rent (“1 in 4 U.S. rental buildings now in the Bilt network”), aside from using their cards to earn points on rent and mortgage. Bilt expects to process over $100 billion in housing payments in 2026. That’s about 5% of the market.
They’ve reported over 5 million members and said that 15% had cobrand credit cards. That’s about 750,000 cardmembers. But it also means over 4 million people have Bilt accounts but not Bilt cards.
People link their cards to their accounts to earn points with Bilt partners. Just 11% of cards linked in a Bilt wallet are their cobrands. They report that linked cards break down as 56% Visa, 32% Mastercard, 9% Amex and 3% ‘other’.
I also think their Bilt Blue Card (See rates and fees) is the best $0 annual fee points transfer card in the market. If you’re maximizing the value proposition of spending alongside housing payments, then the card allows you to earn up to 2.3 transferable points per dollar on your spending. And these are the most valuable points you can earn.
And Bilt Obsidian Card (See rates and fees) which has a $95 annual fee earns 3X points on your choice of grocery (up to $25K/year) or dining (your 3X category choice remains in effect for the entire calendar year), and 2X points on travel. If you’re maximizing the value proposition of spending alongside housing payments, it can earn 4.3 points per dollar on grocery or dining. And then take advantage of transfer bonuses!
Most of Bilt’s program isn’t about the cards. They’re property manager software, payments and leasing; resident loyalty; merchant customer acquisition and checkout; and a smaller premium card business.
What originally interested me in Bilt is that they solved the distribution problem figuring out how to reach high value customers in a way that no one else had done it before. I wrote in 2021 that they were going to be a very big deal because they had customers everyone wanted – in their homes, through their housing payments, in a very sticky way.
But if you are not looking for another credit card, Bilt is still pretty interesting: link your existing cards, take the stacked local rewards, use the neighborhood benefits, and use your existing rewards cards. That’s how Bilt describes most of their members. I’m finding that there’s no richer program out there now, but I am watchful over my mortgage payment to make sure it completes (it has with no glitches).
The reason that Bilt raised money at over a $10 billion valuation last summer (and I don’t know what terms or liquidation preference goes into that number, but it’s still impressive) is that they’ve done something novel and significant in using housing relationships as a distribution platform. They’ve acquired customers in a really unique way. They’re high value customers. And they’ve developed a model to monetize and reward those customers richly at the same time.
It’s one of the most ambitious projects we’ve seen in loyalty marketing since the original launch of American AAdvantage in 1981 – and people forget that American initially only rolled that program out as a test.
Bespoke? Puke.
Do you get points both on your linked card spend as well as Bilt?
or do you get Bilt instead of your card points?
Good defense of something that is so transparently valuable that the explanation should not be necessary. But look at places like Frequent Miler and they clearly don’t understand how to read the statement of benefits or do basic math. They have it valued at $600 a year, but a few minutes tallying up a few of the benefits would get them over double that. Astonishingly, they have readers who obligingly bleat out repeats of these sophormohric errors.
@ffi – you earn your usual points from spend on your linked card, and bilt points for activity with their partners
“You Don’t Need A Bilt Credit Card”… welp, you heard the boss… (I kid, Gary, I kid…)
@Gene — I’d’ve gone with ‘curated’ or ‘sustainable’ to add that … je ne sais quoi… *chef’s kiss*
Other than through Rakuten (RIP 1:1 transfers 5/15) it’s very hard to accrue meaningful points without a Bilt credit card. And notwithstanding @L3 valuing Bilt more highly versus FM (and let’s all be thankful for an easy to use spreadsheet that lists the perks of so many major credit cards that you can assign your own value to versus the FM straw man value, which is the whole point), personally I think there’s a large discount factor to “value” that one has to apply to beta testing a new card. I’m glad that @Gary’s mortgage payment is processing correctly, but when you have to be “watchful” over it, there’s a reason for that, no? Just too many negative data points at this point for me to jump in, which is a shame, because it’s obviously presenting incredible value. Maybe I’ll feel differently in a few months.
@Peter — RIP. 5/15. *salute* (Oh man, can’t wait to see @L3’s rebuttal… that guy…)
Can’t we be honest? The program for non credit cards holders doesn’t influence consumer behavior. There is no buzz about it. No excitement.
Ask any Bilt user what drivers their spend and engagement.
Hint: it’s not the non-cc program
@Desperado — Oh, now we’re being ‘honest’? Well then… 2.0 has been awful for most. From 1x points on rent to a 3% transaction fee. Mental (and somewhat literal) gymnastics to actually use BILT Cash. Customer service and technical quality control issues (though, improving). Not to mention, Kerr literally mocked everyone. Anyhoo, sure, if you just use Palladium as a 2-3x card, fine, it’s ‘okay’ for now. But, like, could change again on a dime (lose transfer partners, Alaska 3x rent, etc.) And, what’s up with promising Blade, Blacklane, but then not actually offering it as a redemption option… Oh, and bring back Rent Day Trivia. I want my free 250 points. Bah!
@Peter: Great news, Reliably more value than any other card without any resort to housing spend. All shown via spreadsheet.
https://www.thechalkreport.com/post/using-frequent-miler-s-valuation-method-the-bilt-palladium-card-is-the-most-valuable-card-they-have
@L3 — You really are the ‘Tim Dunn’ of BILT…
@1990: If I were always wrong then your claim would be correct.
@L3 — Zing!!
@L3 The link went to a post where the opportunity cost is not calculated right – e.g., he lists 8$ as cost of 4k spend = it is 80.
Similarly for Bilt he has 62$ – it should be 620
I agree overall with the post there, but it is full of errors
@1990
Rent is maximum a 3% fee on Bilt Cash – which it self is almost free
$1 spend can get you 2.625c at BofA
Same 1$ spend is 3.3 Bilt points using Bilt cash for rent
so 1 Bilt points is about 0.9c
Exchanging 3 BC for 1 Bilt point on Rent = value of 0.3c for Bilt Cash not 1c
You can also pay 3% fee on rent in and get 2 Alaska points.
@ffi — If you’re gonna pay that 3% anyway, better just get the Alaska Atmos Summit, earn 3x up to $50K, so basically breakeven, if you value those at only 1 cpp (though I usually get closer to 2-3x). Either way, I think the new BILT cards are awful for rent, and just basically C1VX knockoffs.