Air France–KLM’s Flying Blue credit card is set to become the next airline card that earns rewards on rent paid through Bilt—a move that quietly turns one of most people’s biggest monthly bills into a predictable way to generate qualifying spend. The real upside isn’t just more miles – it’s the ability to rack up Flying Blue status credits far faster. I’ve confirmed the information, and it appears to be just a few months off.
Chase’s United cards let you earn miles paying rent through Bilt at a fee. This follows the launch in 2024 of paying rent with Alaska Airlines cards from Bank of America – a 3% fee, but you’re earning 3 miles per dollar.
That’s potentially useful for the miles but it’s really strong if you’re looking to generate spending on the card to earn status. It’s basically
- free spend (the miles earned pay for the cost to earn them)
- and spend you probably weren’t putting on a card already, so no rewards opportunity cost.
So I was excited to discover that there’s at least one other card in the pipeline that will be offering this: the refreshed Air France KLM Flying Blue card from Bank of America.
That’s because the clear play with this card is status.
- You earn 1.5x on all spend at a minimum, and 3x on dining. You can actually do even better if your goal is Flying Blue points, using various bank transfer programs they partner with.
- 3x not just on Air France KLM flights but also SkyTeam flights is interesting. That includes Delta. It’s not 4x (Sapphire Reserve) or 5x (Amex Platinum) but this is an $89 card.
- Basically points-earning is good enough – but it unlocks Flying Blue status.
You earn 20 elite status credits each card anniversary, 80 credits if you spend at least $15,000 on the card in a year, and an additional 60 credits after $25,000 in annual purchases. That can be most of the way to Gold. Plus, there’s a limited-time initial bonus offer: 70,000 bonus miles + 100 elite status credits after spending $3,000 within 90 days of account opening. Together that can generate a total of 260 status credits.
And putting $2,083.33 a month in rent alone on this card – with just a bit of flying for instance, with Delta, can get you real annual status. I use my Flying Blue Gold (obtained via Bilt Platinum) for priority boarding and free checked bags and free exit row seats with Delta. It’s more useful if you actually fly Air France or KLM.
It makes sense that we’d see this (soon) with Air France KLM, since their U.S. card issuer is Bank of America which also issues the Alaska cards – and Alaska’s cards already do this. Plus, they’re a Bilt partner like Alaska is. And Bilt has been onboarding additional programs already (like United). So I guess I wonder, who else is in the pipeline for this?
I keep coming back to the same point. Given programs like this just who wants the Bilt Card? Hyatt Globalists with high housng costs and high spend. But if one can effectively buy Atmos or FB points for 1 cents each by paying rent … that is the right rral for most of the rest of us. Maybe all the mess was on purpose to drive all the real users away.
Rent only though (not mortgage) correct?
Worth mentioning that if you pay rent through Bilt by having them mail your landlord a check, then you can’t use a non-Bilt card to pay the rent. I would love to be using my Summit card for rent for the 3% (especially vs the new Bilt 2.0 cards), but I can’t since my landlord wants a check.
Is this one point per dollar like Atmos?