NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Bilt Card 2.0 and the Points Math: What’s a “Good” Return in 2026?
16 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What new features do the Bilt credit cards offer?
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Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast, where you send us your money questions and we answer them with the help of our genius nerds. I'm Sean Piles.
And I'm Elizabeth Ayala.
Today, we're presenting an episode of Smart Travel, where our friends Megan Coyle and Sally French explain new credit cards from Built. That's the loyalty program that became famous for letting people earn points on rent payments and now mortgage payments as well. It's pretty complicated, though, so we'll let them explain it.
Just keep in mind that since this episode was recorded, Bilt announced more details about the way Bilt Cash works, including monthly limits on how much you can redeem and a new redemption option called Points Accelerator. We can link to the NerdWallet article on Bilt Cash in the episode description if you want to learn more about that.
And also don't forget to follow Smart Travel for more travel and credit card tips. Here's the episode.
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.
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Chapter 2: How can you earn points on rent and mortgage payments?
But first, our disclaimer, and that is that we'll talk about a few credit card companies besides just Bilt, and some of those companies are nerd wallet partners. That does not influence how we discuss them. The benefits, terms, and fees mentioned were accurate at the time of posting, but things can change. Some offers may have expired by the time you're listening.
So for the latest details, follow the links in the episode description.
Ready to dive into Bill?
Oh, Megan, I am so ready.
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?
I guess that's a They also have the quote unquote ability to earn points on mortgage payments for the first time. We will get to that bit in a second.
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.
And I have said I yearn for those Alaska miles that you can earn or at most rewards points because that is really something I couldn't ever earn before because I was not a renter. So I am very intrigued.
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Chapter 3: What are the differences between Bilt Points and Bilt Cash?
I will also say you have probably heard the paid sponsorships for built products on this show. Nobody paid us to do this episode. Megan and I have full editorial independence. We are covering this news because it is such a big story. They are not paying us. They did not send us to any fancy launch parties just to get that out of the way.
Let's start with the real news here, which is all the changes Built Rewards made to its loyalty program and its cards last week.
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.
Can we talk about the bananas?
Yeah, please. Let's do it.
So all these people, this is hilarious to me, and I love like weird credit card lore. Everyone just made the cheapest possible expense that they could to get those five purchases. They're like, what are the five cheapest things I could buy? They just did banana purchase, banana purchase times five.
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Chapter 4: What are the benefits and fees of the new Bilt credit cards?
I love that.
Let's talk about why that wasn't sustainable. So the bank that issued this card, Wells Fargo, didn't have a lot of ways to make money for it, Remember, the annual fee on this card was $0. Yes. So they're not getting money that way. Many of the cardholders probably weren't carrying a balance. They're paying off their five bananas. Exactly.
So they're not paying these interest fees or late fees to the bank. So they're not making money that way either. The only way to make money was on transaction fees. And like you said, some people were only making five purchases a month on their card. Transaction fee is just a percentage of what you pay. So cardholders are earning tons of points on rent and the bank was losing out.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Wells Fargo was reportedly losing $10 million a month on this card.
Whoa, I did not know that. I can't believe they signed on to this deal to begin with.
I know. It wasn't going to last forever.
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Chapter 5: How do Bilt's rewards compare to other popular credit cards?
Wells Fargo is so happy that they're out of it now.
Absolutely. So Bill announced that their partnership with Wells Fargo was ending. This was back in November and that they were going to introduce three new cards. So we finally have the details about those. There are three cards. One still does have a $0 annual fee. That's the built blue card. Then there's the built obsidian card. This one has a $95 annual fee.
And then the fancy one is the built palladium card, which has a $495 annual fee.
And then the real kicker, in addition to all these new card options with various annual fees and various benefits that come with those cards, is that not only are you able to earn points on rent, but you can now earn points on mortgage payments as well. This did seem intriguing to me, as I said, a homeowner, because I have a big mortgage payment with my home and SF.
So I want to be able to earn points on that.
The only problem is that Bilt needed to figure out how to make this all profitable. Yeah.
Classic. We're going to give you rewards, but we also got to make money out of it. So by getting members to spend more money, they have made it very complicated for us. And they presented this in the most confusing way possible.
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Chapter 6: What challenges does Bilt face with its new rewards system?
So literally, as we were recording this episode, they just changed it on us. So for the listeners who don't know, we were talking and we had to rerecord part of what we were just going to say because it is different.
Yeah.
What is different, you ask? So now there are a few options you have. Option one is you can earn points on your rent or mortgage payments in tiers based on how much other spending you do on the card in one month. Also, I'll be clear, the other spending varies based on what your rent or mortgage payment is.
So if you spend at least 25% of your monthly rent, you will earn half a point per dollar spent on that total rent or also mortgage payments. So let's say you have a $4,000 rent or mortgage payment. You would have to spend $1,000 on the card each month to earn the extra 2,000 built points per month. But again, if your rent is $8,000, then you would have to spend $2,000 on the card each month.
So the higher rent or mortgage, the more you also got to spend on other things.
And this is where we should put this into perspective. According to NerdWallet's valuations, bill points are worth about 1.8 cents each. So going back to that $4,000 rent example, you'd only be earning about $36 worth of points for your rent payment. This is not a life-changing amount of points that you're earning on rent.
I will say, though, that is the lowest of the tiers. So if you spend the least amount, which would be 25% that they allow, and you do need to spend at least 25% to get any sort of points, that is the lowest amount. But then there are more tiers. So the higher the percent that you spend on other stuff of your monthly rent or mortgage payments,
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Chapter 7: What strategies can maximize your rewards with Bilt?
the more points you get. So going back, I know it's a lot, 25% of your monthly spend means you get a half a point per dollar on your total housing payment. However, if you spend at least 50% of your monthly payment on other stuff, like your groceries or whatever, you will earn 0.75 points per dollar you spend on housing.
And then if you do even one better, if you spend 75% of your monthly rent payment, you will earn one point per dollar.
And one point per dollar is probably what most people want. It's the standard that built, kind of established under their old system. Are we calling that built 1.0? Because we're calling this one built 2.2 maybe. Who knows what version we're on?
Back when built was nice and easy, built 1.0. Again, you would have to spend now 75% of your monthly housing payment on non-rent purchases. to get this one point per dollar.
This really depends on how much of your spending you're doing on other things. And there's even another tier that we haven't even talked about yet, which is if you're spending the same amount on your credit card on other stuff that's not housing.
So for that $4,000 rent example we've been using, if you're also spending $4,000 a month on other things, on going out to eat, on vacations, and you're putting it all on your built card, you could earn 1.25 points per dollar on your rent. So for the $4,000 a month rent, you'd earn an additional 5,000 points on your rent. That's just a lot of spending.
Oh my goodness.
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Chapter 8: Should you switch to a Bilt credit card or stick with your current one?
I actually do think there is a class of people who spend the same amount of money on their credit card as they do in rent. And that is my wonderful friends out there who have somehow managed to score super cheap rent. If you are paying $500 a month for rent, please tell me where you live because that sounds amazing.
Those people, I think, are probably the most logical candidates for people who would be getting that 1.25 points per dollar spent on their rent. Then again, your rent is only $500, so you are also only getting 500 bill points. So, you know, everything sort of shakes out.
Let's talk about what happens if you do not spend even 25% on your rent. Will you earn any built points under this option if you're spending, let's say, only a couple hundred dollars on this card and that's not even 25% of your rent payment? There is a minimum number of points you'll get just for paying rent with this one of these build cards, and that's 250 points.
If you don't spend at least 25% of your rent or mortgage payment on other things, you'll at least earn 250 points, which like pennies. It's like really not a lot of money.
Not life-changing, but at least I think this could be marginally helpful if you, for some reason, maybe don't meet the spend threshold that month, but you otherwise would earn it, then at least maybe you get something for your rent or mortgage payments that month. Yeah.
Yeah. Honestly, maybe in that case, you just think about the second option for earning it. This is just one of the earning schemes of how to earn points on rent or mortgage payments. So let's move on to the next one, option two.
Tell us about option two. And already, if listeners are sufficiently stressed, I'm with you also. What Bilt did to us is make us really good at algebra, I feel like.
I've done a lot of math in the past couple of days. Okay, option two, you can choose to earn the standard number of points on all the purchases. And then as far as earning on rent, you will basically earn a 4% back in this new currency called Bilt Cash. on all of your purchases that are not rent or mortgages.
And then you can apply that 4% back in built cash towards a 3% fee to earn points on your rent or mortgages. And built cash is a bit strange. It would be great if it was just real cash back and you could get like statement credit or a check in the mail or whatever. But right now you can only redeem it for certain things in the build ecosystem.
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