Wow wow wow. On New Year’s Day “Rent Day” January 1st, Bilt Rewards is offering up to 150% bonuses on points transfers to Air France KLM, Virgin, and IHG One Rewards. They call this “2023’s Most Loved Benefits Return” a repeat of some of their best offers from the prior year, together on one day. These are bigger transfer bonus offers than we see from other programs.

• Base members: 75% bonus
  
• Silver: 100% bonus
  
• Gold: 125% bonus
  
• Platinum: 150% bonus

Retreat Suite, Credit: Virgin Atlantic

Silver is based on 25,000 points earned from any source in a year, Gold from 50,000 points and Platinum 100,000 points. That’s points from leases; Lyft; dining; credit card; points trivia and even just linking accounts.

Now, you still have a few days to bump up to the next level for these offers though there is no guarantee that points earned today or through end of year will be reflected in your status by January 1 but most of the time I’ve seen these updates happen very quickly. Bilt warns it could take up to 96 hours after earning points to update status.

Base (“Blue”) members must transfer a minimum of 2,000 points and those with status have a 1,000 point minimum transfer.

As a Bilt Platinum, I took advantage of the 150% transfer bonus to move 200,000 Bilt points into 500,000 Virgin points. I was kicking myself for not having taking advantage of the Air France KLM bonus offer. The week following the bonus my wife told me she wanted to go to Amsterdam, and KLM had business class award space on the Austin non-stop for her preferred dates.

I wound up taking advantage of a smaller 30% bonus from another card program. Sigh. I will rectify that mistake, knowing that Air France KLM Flying Blue is the best SkyTeam program and I do wind up using their points.

As a pure top off play some might find the 150% transfer bonus to IHG almost worth it, but I don’t. The other two offers? Amazing even at 75%. Bilt Rewards really offers transfer bonuses like nobody else.

In addition to these three points transfer bonuses,

• Free $5 credit from Lyft. Bilt Mastercard® cardholders get a $5 ride credit with Lyft.

  Make sure your Lyft and Bilt accounts are linked and on January 1st select “Activate credits” in the Bilt app on the Rent Day tab. You’ll see your Lyft ride credit under “Lyft Pass” in the Payment section of the Lyft app within 72 hours of activating. The Lyft ride credit is valid for 90 days.

• 50% redemption bonus with Amazon when redeeming points at check-out. That’s still not good value, please save your Bilt points for better redemptions.

• Double points-earning with their co-brand card. As they’ve done each rent day, Bilt Mastercard cardmembers earn 6x on dining; 4x on travel; and 2x on other spend (excluding rent) up to 10,000 bonus points total and as long as they use their card 5 times each statement period to qualify to earn points.

• SoulCycle Rides. Rent Day Rides offer a complimentary bike in special classes booked through the Bilt Rewards app starting December 29th, and one rider attending a ride that day gets a month of rent paid by Bilt.

• Free points trivia. Answer 5 questions in the Bilt app to win up to 150 points, and if you get them all correct you get a bonus 100 points as well.

• Family Feud-style game for free rent. 1,000 members have answered questions in advance, and you guess their answers. Correctly guess the three that are most popular and you’re entered for a chance at having December rent paid for you. This is all done with a celebrity guest. This time it’s Lance Bass, and play starts December 27th at 9 a.m. Eastern.

What I love most about Bilt Rent Day is (1) the richness of the offers, and (2) that they keep coming through. Every month there’s something different, like status match offers as well as point transfer bonuses. It’s a ton of work, but there’s seemingly more action with Bilt than anywhere else – and more opportunities for bonuses, so I keep generating enough points to transfer even though I don’t rent.