TLDR
As of April 2026, Bilt Card 2.0 is live. There are three cards instead of one, mortgage payments now earn points from any lender, and the rent-rewards mechanic is no longer a five-tap workaround. Heavy spenders win, casual users do not.
Introduction
Bilt Rewards moved off Wells Fargo and onto the Cardless platform on February 7, 2026, launching a three-tier credit card portfolio that replaces the original Bilt Mastercard. The new cards carry annual fees of $0, $95, and $495 and reorganize how cardholders earn on rent and, for the first time, on mortgage payments from any lender.
The headline feature is real, and so is the catch. The five-small-purchases trick that used to trigger rent points each month is gone, replaced by a Bilt Cash system that requires meaningful everyday spending to earn full points on a housing payment. Ten weeks in, here is what the program looks like.
What changed on February 7
Bilt confirmed the Wells Fargo partnership ended February 6 and that all current accounts either upgraded to one of the three new Cardless-issued cards or converted to a Wells Fargo Autograph product. Card numbers carried over for cardholders who selected a new Bilt card by the January 30 deadline, which kept autopay and recurring charges intact.
The portfolio is straightforward.
The Bilt Blue Card, at no annual fee, earns 4% in Bilt Cash on everyday spending and up to 1x Bilt points per dollar on rent and mortgage payments, with 1x on everything else.
The Bilt Obsidian Card, at $95, earns 5% Bilt Cash on everyday spending, 2x Bilt points on travel, dining, and groceries, up to 1x on rent and mortgage, plus a $100 annual neighborhood credit.
The Bilt Palladium Card, at $495, earns 4% Bilt Cash, a flat 2x Bilt points on all spending, up to 1x on housing payments, automatic Gold elite status, a $400 annual Bilt travel credit, $200 in annual neighborhood credit, and 4x on Lyft. The launch welcome offer was 50,000 Bilt points plus $300 in Bilt Cash.
Bilt's transfer-partner network was unchanged through the cutover. Points still move 1:1 to the same 22 partners, including United, Alaska, Aeroplan, Hyatt, and Marriott.
How the new Bilt Cash mechanic actually works
This is the part that has driven most of the post-launch debate. Under the old Wells Fargo product, cardholders triggered rent points by making five qualifying purchases per month. Under Bilt 2.0, housing-point earning runs through a Bilt Cash conversion.
The structure: every $30 in earned Bilt Cash converts to 1,000 Bilt points of housing-payment earning. To earn full 1x on a housing payment, a cardholder needs roughly 75% of that payment's worth of Bilt Cash in the same period.
A worked example using Bilt's published numbers. A $3,000 housing payment earns up to 3,000 Bilt points, which requires $90 in Bilt Cash. On the Blue Card's 4% rate, that is $2,250 in non-housing spend per month, or $27,000 a year. On Obsidian's 5%, it is $1,800 a month.
Bilt Cash also expires. Per published terms, balances reset at year-end with $100 carrying over. The cash can be used for neighborhood dining, fitness, or Bilt portal travel bookings, which gives it some optional value beyond housing points.
Mortgage payments process via ACH from a linked bank account, so they don't draw down available credit. Bilt confirmed at launch that any mortgage lender qualifies, not the United Wholesale Mortgage exclusivity rumored before the rollout.
Who comes out ahead, and who doesn't
The structural winners are homeowners with mid-to-large mortgages who were already running meaningful spend through a single rewards card. Earning transferable points on a previously inert payment stream is genuinely new, and there is no other U.S. consumer card program that does it.
The structural losers are low-spend renters. The original Bilt product worked for cardholders who put $200 to $1,000 a month on a card and triggered rent points with token transactions. The Bilt Cash threshold pushes that floor up by an order of magnitude. A renter with $1,500 in monthly card spend will earn partial housing points, not full ones.
The Palladium card is positioned against the Chase Sapphire Reserve and Amex Platinum. The flat 2x earn rate is competitive on paper, and Bilt points value tracks reasonably close to Chase Ultimate Rewards through the airline transfer partners. The $400 travel credit and $200 neighborhood credit recover most of the annual fee for a cardholder who uses both.
What current cardholders should do now
For renters and homeowners who upgraded by the January 30 deadline, the practical question is whether the spending threshold is realistic given the rest of the card stack.
The math is straightforward. Multiply the housing payment by 0.75 to get the Bilt Cash needed. Divide by the card's Bilt Cash rate (0.04 on Blue, 0.05 on Obsidian) to get the monthly non-housing spend required. Compare that to actual non-housing spend over the past three to six months. If the gap is large, factor in earning rates being given up on cards already in rotation.
Cardholders who took the Wells Fargo Autograph default conversion still have their Bilt Rewards account and existing point balance. The Autograph earns 3x on dining, travel, gas, streaming, and phone plans, which is competitive but does not earn on housing payments. Reapplying for a Bilt 2.0 card is now a standard underwriting application.
For renters whose monthly card spend cannot realistically reach the threshold, a flat-rate card like the Citi Double Cash or Capital One Quicksilver paired with a category card is often cleaner. The rent points are worth less if earning them requires shifting spend off cards with stronger bonus categories.
What to watch from here
A few things still aren't settled. Bilt has not published a formal product-change policy between the three new cards, which matters for cardholders who pick the wrong tier and want to move without a hard pull. The transfer-partner network has been stable through the cutover but is worth checking before a major redemption. And the Bilt Cash year-end reset will get its first real test in December 2026, when cardholders who underspent the system find out how much earning they left on the table.
For now, Bilt 2.0 is the only U.S. card program that earns transferable points on rent and mortgage. That uniqueness is the case for the program, and the spending threshold is the case against it. Whether it works depends on how a household already spends, not how it would like to.
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