Tag Archives for bilt rewards.
I’m increasingly loving Bilt Rewards even without the credit card. If you aren’t a member (it’s free) you’re missing out – on points you could be earning, and on the most valuable points currency.
For August 1 Rent Day, Bilt Rewards will run a transfer bonus up to 100% to Avianca LifeMiles. I’m not jumping on it, but maybe you should?
Skeptics of the program have little reason not to participate. If you think they’re providing too much value to be sustainable, that would seem to be an even stronger reason to go all-in with the program (to benefit from the excess value they’re delivering).
Before Bilt, most people did not earn rewards for their single largest expense. Soon they’ll offer points for paying mortgages, too.
What Bilt has done is found a way to solve the distribution problem. Card companies pay airlines billions of dollars for help finding customers. Bilt spun up from scratch, created a brand and pipeline for finding customers that partners are interested in reaching. They want to earn Bilt’s points and benefits. And that is worth billions of dollars.
Bilt Rewards is surveying cardmembers about an overhaul of their product. Today they’re the card that earns points on rent, but they’re almost certainly looking to get consumers using the card for more spending. They’ll be adding points for mortgages, which is amazing. And their points are the most valuable out there.
Now we know what they’re thinking about for Bilt Card 2.0.
Bilt Rewards shared that they would introduce points-earning on mortgages, that there would be a new credit card value proposition, and new benefits coming.
Now they’re out to members with a note describing an upcoming survey about changes they’re considering to the Bilt credit card – that will be going out in the next 48 hours.
Bilt’s first Rent Day of 2025 has an elite status offer with Accor hotels as its headline affair. Accor has 55 brands, with a huge footprint in Europe and they’re large in Asia as well. Some of their most recognizable are Fairmont, Orient Express, Raffles, Novotel and Sofitel.
This morning Bilt is out with a new message to program members that reveals a real pivot in strategy. The message is ‘we’re not just a credit card’.
In this message they lay out some of their vision for 2025, walk through their economics, and drop what I view as something of a bombshell.
I first got the Bilt Rewards Mastercard in November 2021. When the program launched they were with another bank, and launched with Wells Fargo in March 2022. Wells didn’t buy the back book. I suspect the lack of revolve by cardmembers – early adopters like me aren’t a super profitable bunch! – led to this decision.
So there have been Bilt credit cards from two different issuers, although all new cards over the past 27 months have been Wells Fargo cards.
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 »
