Bilt Rewards launched Bilt Card 2.0 on February 7, 2026, replacing the single Wells Fargo-issued Bilt Mastercard with a three-card lineup carrying $0, $95, and $495 annual fees. The headline change, confirmed in Bilt's January 2026 cardholder announcement and the company's launch press release, is that all three new cards earn points on mortgage payments in addition to rent, an expansion that pulls a program built for renters into homeowner territory for the first time.
The relaunch also closes Bilt's three-year partnership with Wells Fargo. The new cards are issued by Cardless, the digital card platform that powers programs for the NBA, several professional sports teams, and a growing list of niche co-brands. Wells Fargo retains servicing for legacy Bilt accounts that opted to convert rather than migrate.
What Changed at Launch
Bilt confirmed the structure of the new lineup in its January 2026 reveal. The three tiers, in Bilt's own naming, are the Bilt Card (no annual fee), the Bilt Plus Card ($95 annual fee), and the Bilt Reserve Card ($495 annual fee). All three share the program's core mechanic: cardholders earn Bilt Points on rent payments without transaction fees, and now on eligible mortgage payments through the same flow.
Earning rates differ by tier. Per Bilt's published terms as of April 2026, the no-fee Bilt Card pays 1x on rent, 1x on mortgage, 2x on dining, and 1x on other purchases. The $95 Bilt Plus pays 2x on rent, 2x on mortgage, 3x on dining, 2x on travel, and includes a $100 annual statement credit toward Bilt's neighborhood dining program. The $495 Bilt Reserve pays 3x on rent and mortgage during Bilt's monthly Rent Day promotion, 4x on dining, 3x on travel booked through Bilt, and adds Priority Pass lounge access, a $300 annual travel credit, and elite-night credits with Bilt's hotel transfer partners.
Mortgage earning carries restrictions Bilt did not flag in early marketing. Cardholders cannot pay any lender; mortgage payments must run through Bilt's payment-processing system, currently rolled out to Bilt's mortgage lender partners and a slowly expanding list of independent servicers. Bilt confirmed in March 2026 that the eligible-lender list covers about 60% of US residential mortgages by volume, with additional servicers being added in batches.
A 100,000-point annual cap on rent earning, which existed under the original Bilt Mastercard, is preserved on the no-fee tier. The $95 and $495 cards raise that cap to 200,000 and 350,000 points respectively. Mortgage earning carries a separate 200,000-point annual cap on the no-fee card and uncapped earning on the two paid tiers, per Bilt's Reward Program Terms.
How the Wells Fargo Transition Worked
Bilt stopped accepting new applications for the original Wells Fargo-issued Mastercard on November 5, 2025. Existing cardholders received in-app prompts in January 2026 with three options: migrate to one of the three Cardless-issued Bilt Card 2.0 products via soft credit pull, convert the Wells Fargo account to a Wells Fargo Autograph Card, or close the account.
Cardholders who migrated to a Bilt Card 2.0 retained their existing card number, meaning saved payment methods at merchants and digital wallets continued working without re-enrollment. The last day to use the original card was February 6, 2026, with the new Cardless-issued plastic active starting February 7. Bilt confirmed in its March 2026 transition update that more than 80% of eligible cardholders chose the migration path.
Existing Bilt Points balances transferred intact. The full lineup of transfer partners, including United MileagePlus, American AAdvantage, Air France/KLM Flying Blue, Hyatt, and IHG, carried over to the Cardless platform without disruption.
Why the Mortgage Expansion Matters
The mortgage feature is the most consequential structural change in Bilt's history. The original card thesis was that rent, the largest monthly outlay for tens of millions of Americans, was uniquely missing from credit-card rewards economics. Bilt's solution worked: the company crossed roughly 3 million members by mid-2025, per disclosures from its 2025 funding round.
Mortgage payments are the homeowner equivalent of that gap. Bilt's expansion targets the roughly 84 million owner-occupied US households, a market several times larger than the rental cohort the original card pursued. The program's earlier partnership with United Wholesale Mortgage, announced in 2024, hinted at the strategy. Bilt Card 2.0 operationalizes it.
Caveats apply. Mortgage earning runs through Bilt's payment-processing layer, not direct billing with the cardholder's lender, which means borrowers have to opt in and route their monthly payment through Bilt rather than autopay from a checking account. Cardholders who currently autopay from a 5% high-yield savings account give up that interest spread when they switch, a tradeoff that only makes sense if Bilt Points redemptions clear roughly 1.7 cents per point in their preferred transfer partner.
What Cardholders Should Watch Going Forward
Several open questions remained as of April 2026. Bilt has not published long-term commitments on the rent-earning fee structure, and the company's billing terms reserve the right to add transaction fees if the card-network economics change. The current no-fee model on rent depends on Mastercard waivers that have been renegotiated twice since 2022.
The Reserve tier's $300 travel credit is structured as a Bilt Travel portal credit, not a flexible travel statement credit, which constrains where the value can be captured. Cardholders comparing the $495 Reserve against the Chase Sapphire Reserve or Amex Platinum should price that in.
Anyone still holding a converted Wells Fargo Autograph Card has a separate decision: the Autograph earns 3x on a broad category set with no annual fee, but does not participate in the Bilt program at all. For readers who lost the rent-earning use case in the conversion, switching to a Bilt Card 2.0 product on the next eligible date is the cleaner path back into the program.
The expansion to mortgage payments and the introduction of paid tiers move Bilt from a single-purpose niche product into a broader rewards program. Whether the math works depends on the spending profile, the eligible-lender status of the cardholder's mortgage, and how Bilt's transfer-partner valuations hold up through the rest of 2026.
This article contains affiliate links. If you apply through our links, we may earn a commission at no cost to you, which helps us continue covering points and miles strategy.
Some of the links in this article are affiliate links. We may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you apply through these links. This helps us keep the site running and continue creating free content.
