Sally French

Welcome to Smart Travel, a deep dive into the tips, tools, and tactics to maximize your travel dollars.

I'm Megan Coyle.

And I'm Sally French.

And we're the travel nerds ready to help you plan your next big trip.

And today, we are talking all about the new credit cards that have been top of mind in the world of points and miles, and that is the new Bilt cards that launched last week.

Ready to dive into Bill?

Let's go.

I want to actually start with a question that one of our producers asked us before we started recording, which is, why are we talking about Bill on Smart Travel?

And I think the reason that Bill Rewards is so popular with travelers is because it's a transferable currency.

So it's like those Chase Ultimate Rewards.

It's like Amex Membership Rewards.

And of course, you can redeem those points for a bunch of different things.

But by far, the best value redemptions are for travel.

So we'll also talk about that more later on.

To understand all of that, I think you have to know what the Built Rewards program was like before.

So Built Rewards is famous for letting members earn points on their rent payments.

And until now, the main way to earn points was to apply for their one credit card.

It's called the Bill World Elite MasterCard credit card.

And it had a $0 annual fee.

And if you made at least five purchases per month on the card, you could earn one point per dollar on your rent payments.