I almost never apply for a new credit card unless it has an attractive welcome bonus. But, I just made a big exception. I finally applied for the Bilt Mastercard that bloggers have been raving about for the past few years.
Why?
The main draw of the Bilt Mastercard is that you can use it to pay rent and earn points on your rent payments with no fees. My son recently signed an apartment lease in his college town, so we will soon have rent payments.
In addition, Bilt is the only flexible currency that currently transfers to American Airlines. Since my family is planning to book award flights to Japan for next year, I’m looking to earn more AA miles.
Bilt Mastercard
- 3X points on dining
- 2X points on travel
- 1X points on rent
- 1X points on all other purhcases
- On Rent Day (the 1st of each month), point earnings are doubled (6X on dining, 4X on travel, 2X on all other purchases)
- Pay rent and earn points without any fees
- No foreign transaction fees
- Trip cancellation and interruption coverage
- Auto rental collision coverage
- Cell phone protection
- No annual fee
- You must use card 5 times during each billing statement in order to earn points
Paying rent with Bilt: Bilt gives you a bank routing number and account to pay rent, which then charges back to your card. Or, Bilt can send your landlord an actual check.
While the card does not have a welcome bonus, some users get an offer for 5X points on all purchases for the first 5 days after getting the card. This appears to be a targeted offer, and nobody has figured out the rhyme or reason why some folks get this 5X offer and some folks do not. The maximum points you can earn on this offer is 50,000.
Thankfully, we did get the 5X offer! It came via text and email around the same time the card arrived. We pulled money out of savings to charge and pay off our 2025 cruise on Icon of the Seas. We also purchased a new refrigerator that we already planned on buying soon.
My husband was impressed with the box the card arrived in. The card pops out on the left, and the terms and conditions are neatly boxed on the right side.
Bilt Rewards
You don’t actually have to have the Bilt Mastercard to earn Bilt Rewards. You can sign up for a Bilt Rewards account and still earn points on Lyft rides and with the Bilt dining program.
Bilt Rewards points are very useful. Transfer partners include:
- Aer Lingus AerClub
- Air Canada Aeroplan
- Air France-KLM Flying Blue
American Airlines AAdvantage- Avianca LifeMiles
- British Airways Executive Club
- Cathay Pacific Asia Miles
- Emirates Skywards
Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles- Iberia Plus
- IHG One Rewards
- Marriott Bonvoy
- Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles
- United Airlines MileagePlus
- Virgin Red (Virgin Atlantic)
- World of Hyatt<——EEK! My favorite!
Historically, Bilt has offered transfer bonuses on Rent Day. On the last Rent Day (Feb 1), Bilt offered a transfer bonus of 75%-150% to Air Canada Aeroplan.
In addition to the above transfer partners, you can also redeem Bilt points on rent, a downpayment for a house, travel booked through Bilt’s travel portal, Amazon purchases, merchandise and fitness classes.
Final Thoughts
This isn’t a credit card I recommend to miles and points newbies since it doesn’t have a true welcome bonus. However, for those who pay rent, it’s nice to earn points on those payments. Plus, the transfer partners are great.
If you’re interested in applying for the Bilt Mastercard and you want to support our blog, you can apply through Leana’s link here or my link here.
Readers, do you have this card? Or are you thinking about getting it someday?
Is it possible to use the bank routing number, etc. to pay T-mobile bills, so that we can utilitze the cell phone insurance without their ‘credit card penalty’?
@Jo No, I believe the routing number is only useable for rent.
I never intended on getting this card, but my apartment increased the fees on other credit cards and made paying by Bilt free.
They didn’t accept Amex in the first place and I wasn’t looking forward to paying a $100+ fee for paying my rent via credit card (been using the CFU) nor missing out on points by paying direct with ACH, so I got the Bilt. Only thing I need to keep track now is the 5 monthly charges required to get the points.
@Jinxed Glad you will not miss out on getting points for that rent! I’m planning to put the Bilt card as my default payment on my grocery orders, so that should get me the 5 charges per cycle.