Bilt: Guide to Cards + Earning on Mortgage and Rent Payments

Earning points on mortgage and rent payments sounds great, and the Bilt system can work well for some people, but there are many factors to consider when deciding if a card is right for you. This guide breaks down the new Bilt cards, all the changes with Bilt, how to earn points on rent and mortgage payments, and the costs involved.

The new Bilt cards will be a great fit for some, but they won’t be a no-brainer for everybody. Our goal is to give you the tools and resources to help you make a decision that works for your situation.

And if this seems confusing to you, you’re not alone! The new Bilt system has left a lot of people confused, even those with years of experience in the points and miles world. Thankfully, not everything in the points and miles world is this complicated.

Quick Hits

• Three new Bilt cards are coming February 7, 2026 — annual fees range from $0 to $495
• You can’t earn points on a housing payment (mortgage or rent) unless you open one of the Bilt credit cards
• To earn points on mortgage or rent payments, you’ll need to put a lot of regular spending on a Bilt credit card (or pay a fee)

Bilt Credit Cards

Bilt has three credit cards to choose from. If you want to earn points on housing payments, you need to have at least one of them. All of the cards earn the same amount of points on housing payments, but they differ in the points you can earn for other purchases.

Remember that you don’t need to have a card to be a part of the Bilt Rewards program.

Note that you can only hold one Bilt credit card at a time. You can be an authorized user on more than one card.

Spend Towards Status

All three Bilt cards allow you to earn Bilt status by putting eligible spend on the card. Rent and mortgage payments do not count as eligible spend. Here’s the level of status you can earn at the different spend levels:

• Silver: $10,000
• Gold: $25,000
• Platinum: $50,000

Bilt status is helpful for two key reasons: transfer bonuses and Rakuten.

Bilt regularly offers elevated transfer bonuses, and the higher status you have, the better the transfer ratio.

If you’ve opted into earning Bilt points through Rakuten, any points earned through Rakuten transfer to Bilt at a 1:1 ratio through May 15, 2026. After that, you need to have Silver status or higher to keep the 1:1 transfer ratio.

General Words of Caution

Some of the Worst Travel Protections

One of the biggest reasons I don’t think Bilt cards can be the only cards in your wallet is their pitiful travel protections. I don’t recommend purchasing flights or hotels with your Bilt cards, as their travel protections are very limited and max out at $2,000 per trip.

No product changes

Bilt cards are issued by Cardless, which does not allow you to product change (upgrade or downgrade) after a year. It’s possible they will work out an agreement on this, but as of now, Bilt has said you cannot do this. Whatever card you pick, you’ll likely be stuck with.

Taxes are not an “Eligible Expense”

Only eligible expenses earn Bilt points and Bilt cash. This is pretty standard in theory—most credit cards exclude certain expenses from earning points. For example, money orders and person-to-person payments through sites like Venmo and PayPal are typically excluded.

Bilt added an additional restriction for Tax Payments. 

Update January 21, 2024 — Bilt no longer excludes payments to eBay or online resellers. 

Here’s the fine print directly from Bilt:

“Eligible Purchases” or “Purchases” means transactions for goods or services and Bilt Housing Payments made with your Bilt Card, minus returns, refunds, or credits. The following purchases do not qualify as “Eligible Purchases” and do not earn Bilt Points or Bilt Cash: Balance transfers, special transfers, cash advances, cash withdrawals, card check transaction, instant loan, travelers checks, money orders, wire transfers or similar cash-like transactions, prepaid cards, gift cards, person-to-person payments (such as Venmo, PayPal, Cash App, or Zelle), tax payments (except property taxes included as Bilt Housing Payments), cryptocurrency or other digital currency purchases, fees or interest posted to your Card Account (including annual fees, late fees, and returned payment fees), lottery tickets, casino gaming chips, race track wagers or similar betting transactions, and checks that access your Card Account.

Bilt Blue

My Take: With only earning 1 point per dollar on all purchases, this card just doesn’t measure up to other no-annual fee cards. You could just get a card like a Chase Freedom Unlimited® which earns 1.5x on every purchase and you wouldn’t have to mess with the mortgage payments.  

The only plus I see for this one is if you are transitioning from the Wells Fargo cards and can get this without a credit inquiry. Then even without spending anything on the card, you could pay your housing through Bilt and earn 250 points per month.

Bilt Obsidian

My Take: I think Bilt tried to make a card here to battle with our perennial favorite: the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card®. But frankly, they failed.

Best feature: 3x on dining or groceries (up to $25,000 per year)

You have to choose whether you want to receive 3x points on dining OR grocery. The selection defaults automatically to 3x on dining, but you have 30 days after approval to change the selection to grocery if you wish. You make the designation in your Bilt wallet.

You can change the designation once a year, in January. This is the same for everybody, regardless of when you actually open the card.

Sounds better than it is: $100 hotel credit

The advertised $100 hotel credit seems nice. Until you reason it is broken into two $50 credits, requires a two-night stay, and must be booked via Bilt Travel. In comparison, the $50 annual hotel credit on the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card® can be used even on a 1 night stay.

Pro Tip: Don’t book travel on this card

Even though it earns 2x on travel, I highly discourage you from putting any airline or hotel spend on this card — the travel protections it provides are horrible. They only kick in if you pay the full amount to the card and max out at $2,000 per trip. This pales in comparison to Sapphire coverage — $10,000 per trip and kicks in with just paying your taxes on your card.

Possible Strategy: $1000 groceries/month to 52,000 points/year

You could move all your grocery spending to this card. If you spend $1,000/month on groceries, you’d earn 3000 points per month that way.

Then you could use the BILT cash you’d earn to get some points on part of your housing payment — you’d have earned $40 Bilt cash with that $1,000 of grocery spend.

That could give you another 1,333 points per month if you pay your housing through Bilt. That would come out to 52,000 points per year for that $1,000/month of grocery spend.

Bilt Palladium

Pro: lots of Bilt Cash upfront, enough to earn on $22,000 of housing

As an ongoing benefit, this card gives you $200 in Bilt cash each calendar year plus you get $300 from opening the card.

After you do the $4,000 required spending on this, you’d have another $160 Bilt cash. So that’s a total of $660 Bilt cash as soon as you have met your $4000 required spend.

That’s enough to earn 22,000 points on $22,000 of housing payments. But keep in mind that you’d need to make sure you were able to pay that much in housing payments by December 31, since Bilt cash mostly expires and only $100 can roll over.

Even so, the welcome offer is still just average

You get 50,000 points after you spend $4,000 in 3 months, which is very low compared to other cards. You’d also have earned 8,000 points from that spending. Then you can leverage your Bilt cash to earn 22,000 points on $22,000 of housing. That’s a total of 80,000 points…but you paid $495 and had to jump through a bunch of hoops. So that’s just about average return, but for more effort than many cards.

With the welcome offer you do get Bilt Gold status right off the bat, which gives you a 1:1 ratio with Rakuten and possibly some transfer bonuses on Bilt day, which could be worth more to some people.

Other benefits are fine, what you’d expect from a high annual fee card

The hotel credits are okay — you get two, $200 hotel credits per year for hotel stays of 2 nights or more. This does have to be booked via Bilt Travel. These could be useful for quick trips or sports tournaments.

Priority Pass access at least includes 2 guests, but only for lounges, not to other experiences like spas, Gameway, or restaurants. It’s limited, but if as family you have another card with Priority Pass that doesn’t quite cover everyone in your household, this might bridge the gap.

Do not book travel on this card

Remember that the travel protections aren’t great; I really can’t recommend booking travel with this card. It has the same $2,000 per trip limitation as the Obsidian card. And requires you to book the full ticket with this card to get coverage.

Other purchase protections are a mixed bag

The extended warranty will be better for some purchases and not others. That’s because it doubles a warranty period — up to 2 years. So for items with a 2 year warranty it gives you an extra 2 years. But for items with a shorter warranty, it only doubles it. So if you buy an item with a 30 day warranty, it only gives you 60 days total.

Because of that and because I like to keep it easy, I’m not sure I would default to making purchases on this card. I’d personally rather know I’m always getting a full year extension, since a lot of items have warranties of a year or less.

This does have one great benefit which is Price Drop protection for 90 days. This is a benefit I haven’t seen in a while on a card! With this, if you buy something and it drops in price, you can file a claim for the difference for 90 days.

Bilt Points vs Bilt Cash

The first thing to understand is that Bilt has introduced a new currency called Bilt Cash. All three of the new Bilt cards earn both Bilt points and Bilt cash.

Bilt Points

Bilt points haven’t changed. They can be earned and redeemed in a variety of ways. We have a full guide to Bilt Rewards that gives you more information on how to earn and redeem Bilt points.

Bilt has some unique transfer partners (like Japan Airlines and Atmos) that can provide excellent value. Whether you have a Bilt credit card or not, earning and using Bilt points is a fantastic way to help you save money on travel.

All of the Bilt cards earn Bilt points at varying levels.

Bilt Cash

Bilt cash is different from points. It can only be used in the Bilt ecosystem, and information on what exactly it can be used for, how much you can use at a time, and how to redeem it (beyond using it to offset transaction fees when paying rent/mortgage bills) has been vague at best.

• Bilt cash has a variety of complicated and sub-par uses. But the primary one we will discuss is the use of Bilt cash to enable you to earn Bilt rewards points on your housing costs.
• If you’ve chosen Bilt cash as your housing rewards method (more on this below), you earn Bilt cash by putting spend on a Bilt credit card at a rate of 4%. So for every $100 you spend on a Bilt card, you earn 4 dollars of Bilt cash. Again, this isn’t straight cash back and can’t be easily redeemed.
• You can also earn Bilt cash through their new credit card welcome offers.

According to their website, you can earn Bilt cash in other ways as well, but information is limited at this point. The website says: “Earn $50 of Bilt Cash for every 25,000 Bilt Points you earn toward your status across the Bilt ecosystem”. Most normal people probably aren’t earning tens of thousands of points towards Bilt status, so this may not be that helpful.

Bilt cash expires at the end of the year it’s earned in. For example, Bilt cash earned in 2026 will expire on 12/31/26. Even if you don’t earn it until mid-December. You can rollover up to $100 in Bilt cash.

How to Use Bilt Cash

The main way we will discuss using Bilt cash is to redeem it when you pay mortgage or rent payments to offset the transaction fee.

You can also use Bilt cash to cover certain limited expenses in Bilt travel, fitness classes through Bilt neighborhood, dining purchases at select restaurants, and more.

You can see the full list of Bilt Cash redemptions here. You’ll see that most of them are very limited in usage.

Two Options for Paying Rent and Mortgage Payments

There are two ways to earn points on housing payments. You would need to pick one of these, but could change between the methods in different months.

Tiered Earning Based on Spend (No Bilt Cash)

If you select this option, you won’t earn any Bilt cash on your spending on your Bilt card.

You can pay rent or mortgage via Bilt and earn points on the payment. But the points that you earn will be tied to how much you’ve spent on your Bilt card, relative to your housing payment. Your tier can change every month. It’s unclear at this time if the tier is determined by the current month’s spending or the previous month’s spending.

If you don’t meet any tier, you will earn 250 points just for running a housing payment through Bilt.

Strategy Tips: This method is best for someone who plans to use their Bilt card as their primary credit card and whose spending will be at least 75% of their housing payment. This method only works if you are spending every single month on this card.

Most people should start with the Bilt Cash option until they have used their Bilt Cash from welcome offers. Even if you don’t want to spend on your Bilt card regularly, you could choose this option after you’ve used your Bilt Cash. If you run your housing payment through Bilt, you’ll at least earn 250 points per month, even without any spending on the card. That’s a modest return (3000 points per year) but better than nothing, assuming the ACH process is reliable.

Bilt Cash Option:

With this system, you earn 4% Bilt Cash on eligible purchases made with your Bilt card. Note that if you plan to pay taxes with this card, taxes are not an eligible expense and you won’t earn Bilt Cash on them.

Then when you go to pay your housing payment through your Bilt account, you can use Bilt Cash to earn points on that payment. Every $30 of Bilt Cash you redeem gives you 1000 points. The maximum you can redeem each month is up to the same number of points as the cost of your housing payment. So if your housing payment is $3000, you could earn a maximum of 3000 points and would have to redeem $90 Bilt cash to do so.

If you don’t have enough Bilt cash to earn points for your whole housing payment, you can use whatever Bilt cash you have to earn points.

If you only have $30 in Bilt cash and a $3000 mortgage, you could still use the Bilt cash to earn 1,000 points.

Strategy Tips: Almost everyone with the new cards should start with this method until they have used up all their Bilt cash.

After that, this method is best for anyone who prefers to make a few bigger purchases per year on their Bilt card in order to earn the cash they need to earn points on their housing. You might choose to bundle big purchases like car insurance, tuition, daycare, etc. Just keep in mind that only $100 of Bilt cash can roll over to the next year, so make sure you’re using it before December 31!

Bilt 2.0 Calculator

 Opportunity Cost

Like with anything, there’s an opportunity cost to putting a lot of spend on a Bilt credit card.

If you’re putting significant spend on a Bilt card to earn points on your housing payments, you could be missing out on the opportunity to open new cards and earn welcome offers.

For example, if your monthly housing payment is $3,000, you would need to put $2,500 on a Bilt card every month in order to fully offset the fee with Bilt Cash, or to earn 1x points using the tiered system.

If you’re a normal person with a normal budget, putting that much monthly spend on your Bilt card means you probably won’t have enough additional expenses to be able to open new credit cards as often.

Opening a new credit card to earn the welcome offer is the quickest way to earn a lot of points. If you’re not able to do that because you’re putting all your regular spend on a Bilt card, you’ll earn far fewer points in the long run.

Alternative for Earning Points on Rent

Bilt has a partnership with Atmos where you can earn 3x points on rent by paying through Bilt with your Atmos card. If you hold the Atmos™ Rewards Ascent Visa Signature® credit card or the Atmos™ Rewards Summit Visa Infinite^® Credit Card, you can use those to pay rent through Bilt and earn 3x points.

When you use one of those cards to pay your rent through Bilt, you’ll be charged a 3% transaction fee. There’s no way to offset that fee with Bilt Cash or anything else.

Since you’re paying 3% and earning 3x points, it’s essentially like buying Atmos points at 1 cent per point. If you value Bilt points and are able to get consistently good value from them, this good be a good alternative option to earning points on rent.

This only works for rent payments, not mortgages.

What Changed from Bilt 1.0

This section is only relevant for anyone who was familiar with Bilt 1.0 — or the original Bilt card issued by Wells Fargo

New system for earning points on housing costs

Previously, you could pay rent fee-free through Bilt using your Bilt credit card and you would earn 1 point per dollar spent. The only requirement was that you had to put at least five transactions on your credit card during the month to be eligible to earn points. It was easy to put a few small purchases on the card and still earn points on rent.

Now you can still pay rent fee-free through Bilt, but you won’t earn points unless you pay a 3% fee or put regular monthly spend on the card.

Housing payments are direct ACH draft, not part of your credit limit

In the old system, rent was charged to your credit balance, just like any other credit card charge. That meant you could pay it off slowly throughout the month, not just in one lump sum on the 1st of the month.

Now, rent is paid by ACH draft directly from your bank account (even if you use your Bilt card to pay for it), so you have to pay the entire amount all at once.

On the flipside, now those mortgage/rent payments won’t use up your credit balance, so you’ll have more credit available for your everyday expenses.

Paying a Mortgage

You can now pay mortgage payments with your Bilt card to earn points. Previously, only rent payments were allowed.

No Cap on Rent/Mortgage Payments

Previously, you could only earn up to 100,000 points per year on rent payments. Now there is no limit to the number of Bilt points you can earn through mortgage and rent payments.

This could be theoretically valuable for people who own multiple properties. You could use a Bilt card to make payments on all of them and still earn points. But this would require a very large amount of spending to do so.

Who the Old System was Good For

The old system worked especially well for people who had low monthly expenses and paid rent. They could earn points on rent (fee-free) without putting a lot of spend on the card.

What to do if you’re a Current Bilt Cardholder

Current cardholders have two options. You can keep your current account with Wells Fargo, or you can transition to a new Bilt card with Cardless.

No new credit check is required for either option.

Keep Your Account with Wells Fargo

If you want to keep your account with Wells Fargo, it will become a Wells Fargo Autograph Visa Card. The card won’t be associated with Bilt anymore and you’ll get a new card number.

Transition to the New Bilt 2.0

You must select a new Bilt card by January 30, 2026. Your credit balance can be transferred over to the new card if you choose, or you can pay it off through your old account with Wells Fargo. Credit limits on the new card will be determined by Cardless.

The new cards are not active until February 7, 2026.

Current Bilt cards will continue to work through February 6, 2026.

Current cardholders are eligible to earn the welcome offer on any of the new Bilt credit cards.

Bilt is advertising a “seamless” transition for current cardholders, but the transition period has been a bit bumpy so far. Many current cardholders are finding that they’re being denied one of the new cards for no apparent reason.

FAQs

What Rent and Mortgage Payments are Eligible?

According to Bilt, any personal mortgage or rent payment is eligible to be paid on a Bilt card and earn points through the program terms.

Commercial rent or mortgages are not eligible.

Does Bilt offer a business card?

No. Currently, Bilt only offers personal credit cards.

Is it worth getting a Bilt card if I don’t want to use it for rent or mortgage payments?

Possibly. You can use a Bilt card to earn Bilt points even if you don’t put rent or mortgage payments on the card. Since those points are so flexible, it could make sense for you to hold the card even if you don’t want to use it to pay a mortgage or rent. But for most people, they would want to start with other cards that have more well-rounded benefits and bigger welcome offers.

Should I use my Bilt card to make mortgage or rent payments if I don’t want to deal with Bilt cash?

If you don’t want to deal with Bilt cash, you can choose the tiered option. Rent/mortgage payments will be fee-free, and you will earn a tiered amount of points based on how much you spend on your Bilt card each month. If you don’t spend anything on your credit card, you will earn a minimum of 250 points.

When going through Bilt to make payments, Bilt functions as a middleman. It can make sense to use a middleman when you’re earning points or getting other benefits. You have to decide if that is worth whatever points you’d earn.

If I open a Bilt card, can I change to a different card later?

It’s common to upgrade or downgrade cards in the same card family to get different benefits or avoid paying an annual fee. For example, you might start with the no annual fee Blue card and decide later that you want to upgrade to the Palladium card (or vice versa).

Bilt has announced that changing to a different card product won’t be available in the first year. They have not confirmed whether or not it will be possible in the future, but Cardless (the issuer) has never allowed product changes.