Tag Archives for bilt rewards.
Bilt gets plenty of attention for its credit cards, but most members do not even have one. More than 4 million people have Bilt accounts without a Bilt card — and they can still earn transferable points through dining, Lyft, Walgreens, fitness, travel bookings, shopping, parking, GoPuff and housing-related rewards.
Bilt’s 100% Rent Day transfer bonus was good enough for me to break my usual rule against speculative transfers: I moved 100,000 Bilt points to British Airways with no trip booked. The cap changes the math, I know I’ll use Avios, and I’m earning Bilt points fast enough now that keeping every point flexible no longer makes sense.
Bilt Rewards just announced Bed Bath & Beyond as a new partner, which mostly made me wonder how Bed Bath & Beyond is still around. It turns out the answer involves Overstock buying the dead retailer’s name, buybuy BABY getting reacquired, Reality TV’s Marcus Lemonis taking over, and one of the strangest corporate reincarnation stories in retail.
I got the new Bilt Palladium card expecting good value—but now I’m consistently earning over 3 points per dollar on all my spending. The card’s points-earning power, especially combined with paying my mortgage, Bilt Cash redemptions, and frequent transfer bonuses, makes it an absolute juggernaut. Here’s why it’s quickly become my top card.
The new Bilt Palladium Card earns more valuable points faster than any other card I carry, and for everyday spend it is not even a close call. That is exactly why its messy rollout and a handful of frustrating design choices matter so much: this could be the best spend card on the market by far, and Bilt still managed to get several important pieces wrong.
Bilt’s new $495 Palladium card is already delivering in ways that matter: the 50,000-point bonus posts fast, Gold status locks in through early 2028, and with the right stacking strategy the card can generate 4X on everyday spend — turning routine purchases into outsized transfer value with partners like Alaska, Hyatt, and Air France-KLM.
Bilt says cardholders will be refunded after reports that some foreign transactions were posting about 0.2% higher on statements than they first appeared in the app, despite the card being marketed with no foreign transaction fee.
I was about to place a GrubHub order when I realized something that does not get enough attention about Bilt Cash.
Used the right way, it can be worth a full dollar on the dollar toward something you were already going to buy anyway. That is far better than stretching for a redemption that feels more exciting but delivers less real value. And because this works through a GrubHub gift card, it can stack with monthly card credits and be saved for later use.
Bilt launched a new “Neighborhood Concierge” AI that’s supposed to handle practical stuff like restaurant recommendations, rides, and booking travel with points — but it behaves like a general-purpose chatbot too. With a little prompting, it will troubleshoot problems, write usable code snippets, and handle the same kind of open-ended questions people normally pay for in standalone AI tools.
Bilt Palladium’s earn rates and transfer bonuses can generate outsized value — especially if you’re redeeming to expensive partners like Hyatt or stacking a big Rent Day bonus to Japan Airlines. The problem is simple: swipe fees don’t cover that, particularly for heavy spenders who maximize housing earn. It needs cross-subsidy: less engaged members redeeming cheaply and leaving value on the table to fund power users who extract it.
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 »
