How To Redeem Bilt Rewards Points For Best Value: Are They Worth Collecting?

"Up until now, I’ve exclusively used my Bilt points for situations where there are transfer bonuses. I hope these offers continue, as that’s how I’ll continue to use my points."

Yes, that's THE BEST use of Bilt points. However, I predict such opportunities of greater-than-50% transfer bonuses will diminish gradually but quickly in Bilt 2.0, as the program's finance deteriorates.

redeem every time you get to 1000 points. Soon, BILT will go poof, as will all your points!

I think Tony is right. The launch has been such a clusterfuck and I have no confidence that BILT will be around to accumulate enough points to be useful. I got my card, activated it, waited a day (since I know there are fintechs involved, so there are more places where things need to be updated) and my card was still declined for a pizza! (this is on a credit line that could actually pay my rent in advance for more than a year).

Others have reported more dramatic screwups ... I'm just gonna stick this in the back of my sock drawer until it actually becomes useful.

Ben, if the purveyors of doom are wrong and Bilt happens to survive, could you please republish this article on February 7th of each year? For the just-completed year, could you please assess whether Bilt offered a reasonable ecosystem when compared to other card-issuer ecosystems? Thank you.

I recently dumped my Bilt card with the plan to pay rent via my Atmos Summit Card. Went into Bilt to pay rent and they no longer support Venmo payments unless you're a Bilt member, even though I'm willing to pay the 3% fee. What a joke.

Not a good idea. By the that time Bilt could be done! Just get it while you can! Paying out 6% is not sustainable. Booked my helicopter ride for Tuesday so I thank Bilt for that. Never been on one before so a little nervous.

I do like the points accelerator feature. And that’s the only thing I like about BILT. I’m gonna pass. BILT and cardless are two terrible companies. I’ll check back at end of 2026…if they’re still around.

I know of 3 people personally that have a BILT card…only one of them is able to use card, they have no housing costs running thru BILT. The other two have been locked out for over a week!

"Paying out 6% is not sustainable."

They are not paying out 6%. Bilt cash isnt worth anywhere near $0.01 on the dollar. If well optimized it can be around 3%, though I imagine most redemptions are nowhere near optimized.

Hyatt, Hyatt, Hyatt... particularly given Palladium lets you earn at 2x
I'm curious what you think about Bilt cash redemption options? $200 for 3x Bilt points or exchanging $30 for 1,000 are both not great; other options are not that great either (maybe the odd Soulcyle/Barrys). But Bilt cash accumulates fairly quick at 4x and have $500 anyway from the card launch. Maybe March 1 will change it a bit when new redemption options open up

I think a lot of the doom and gloom about Bilt's future (not by you Ben, mostly by comment sections) gets this all wrong.

If you think they won't be around in 2-3 years, then its precisely the WRONG action to sit on the sidelines now. If its a great deal now, yet you doubt the long term viability, you SHOULD be jumping in head first to take advantage while the getting is good! Pretty easy between sign up bonus/rakuten/points accelerator/mortgage earnings to earn close to 200k points in one year with Palladium if you are a medium to high spender. My plan is to churn and burn then drop it.

Worst (best?) case- if they stick around for 2-3 years and I want the card again I'll just have P2 get it

Yeah, I can get $5 off a Lyft a few times a year or top off the $200 Hotel credit for $100 twice a year. After that, it's maximize my rent points. It's not actual cash.

Did they ever allow using the Alaska card if you pay rent by Venmo? I wanted to start using my Summit card for rent when I got it last year, but I was never able to because I have to pay my rent by check and that was only ever allowed by using the Bilt card.

They did previously- I was able to pay via Venmo and use my Summit card. Huge bummer with the current situation!

Yes. YES. YESSS!!! Hyatt!! (Also, Alaska!)

That’s a great idea. Seriously, as one of said-doomsayers, honestly, I hope to be wrong. I’d love it if BILT overcame the odds, and continued to exist after years and years. I still like the idea of earning points off rent, but I just wish the 1.0 system lasted (thanks for all the fun, sugar-daddy Wells Fargo.) While 2.0 is complicated, it still has some merit, and many of us are still giving it a try, at least for year 1, SUB, churn and burn. Will be wild to see how it’s going by March of 2027, after a lot of us downgrade to no-fee or close it altogether.

“Fugazi, fugazi. It’s a wazzy, it’s a woozy. It’s fairy dust. It doesn’t exist.” — The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey)

Don't hoard points. Especially do not hoard BILT points. The program is no longer backed by a 'too big to fail' bank like Wells Fargo, as of February 2026. So, if anything happens, it'll be finger-pointing, limited-to-no-notice shutdown. Earn 'em and burn 'em, folks, regardless of a possible transfer bonus. Also, they can lose transfer partners on a whim, too (recall AA used to be one.) If BofA, Chase, etc. pull a Citi and demand AS, UA, or Hyatt be pulled, watch out.

The skeptics are right to be concerned (losing 1.0 was a major loss; you really have to 'game' 2.0 for it to make sense); more importantly, BILT lost it's too-big-to-fail backer (WF), and could have real financial issues if there's an economic downturn (which there is) and if their VC-money dries up (which it could). Specifically, next February (2027) is gonna be rough as everyone that paid $495 AF reconsiders renewing their expensive Palladium card... there'd better be some juicy retention offers, or it's gonna get ugly.

The intensity and volume of your comments across many articles suggest emotions beyond healthy are in play.

Ben - I’d be interested in an article where you break down how to use Bilt Cash for good value. Like you, I’ve been using it to add 1 point per dollar to my everyday spend (as well as earn points for rent) but I can only do that 5 times before the end of the year. I redeemed $10 for a $10 Walgreens gift card, which was immediately available and fairly easy to figure out. That can be done once per month and provides dollar-for-dollar value. There’s no benefit to hoarding the Bilt cash as I think you can only role over $200/year. Anyways, I’d be interested to see your thoughts on that piece of the Bilt program. It’s an afterthought when compared with the points, but there’s some significant value buried in there. Thanks!

Agreed

I wouldn’t touch BILT with your 10ft pole. Program has way too many fraud issues. They’ll also debit your account for no reason. And they’ll lose payments you make.

Just started this month playing in the Bilt ecosystem with the Palladium card. Because of the lucrative SUB. As I see it, you can consistently earn 3% on everyday spending. The standard rate is 2%, but by redeeming 200 Bilt cash, you increase that to 3% on $5000 of spending. But you also earn Bilt cash at 4% on spending. So by the time you’ve spent that $5000, all of which earned 3% in Bilt points, you’ve also earned another 200 in Bilt cash, basically replacing the 200 Bilt cash you spent to increase your earnings rate from 2% to 3%. So in other words, you can forego increasing your Bilt cash balance and in exchange rack up 3% instead of 2% in Bilt points on all your spending. Very complicated, but it works.

Got the Paladium card and transferred points to Atmos for RT business class tickets on Condor from JFK to Venice.

I also question the sustainability of this program given Wells Fargo did not see it to worth while to continue with. I feel the same way about Rove. I just don’t see how sustainable it is either and have stayed clear of that as well. Mesa disappeared on a dime last year and I would not be surprised if Bilt and Rove did the same thing.

Bilt reminds me of Movie pass to some degree.

Ben, if you actually have the card (and I think you do), and if you've been using it regularly, you likely have a glut of BILT Cash, which, if you aren't using to offset rent/mortgage fees, is kinda hard to actually redeem, after using the 5x Accelerators. Ankur's team has teased these high-value redemptions with Blacklane and Blade, but have waited now 6 months, yet it's still 'Coming Soon.' If you have an inside source, you really should push for more details on that, because if they don't 'go live' with those and other redemptions, a lot of us are gonna have that excess 'CASH' expire... (maybe that was their plan all-along...)

Everyone will have excess Bilt Cash expiring. But, if the Bilt Cash a person can use, do they generate good value? Points accelerator, hotel credit, Lyft, Walgreens, Grub Hub. 0.25x extra transfer bonus. Those are my uses. The value of those far exceed the annual fee. The others will come when they come. Uber is buying Blacklane. There's a potential conflict with Bilt's relationship with Lyft.

Cashing out to Hyatt at 2x per $ is the way to go. And with accelerators it's 3x. It's a no brainer even with the big deval. And def not keeping the points in Bilt just in case, or at least until there's some sort of understanding that the program has long-term viability.

My issue without Blacklane and Blade yet being available is accumulating bilt cash with no way to spend it. Would love to know how people who spend a lot on their bilt card manage to spend it all - other than the accelerators and travel credit, the rest is fairly minor. I know it's not real-world cash and I probably need to just get past it, but knowing I'll likely have a balance at year end that isn't going to roll over feels bad.

Ditto - even though it's not real-world cash, feels bad to know it's gonna expire at the end of the year. No way I'm gonna be able to spend it without Blacklane and Blade. I'm wondering whether Bilt is deliberately holding back on releasing Blade and Blacklane because they know a bunch of people have large Bilt cash balances, and will be immediately cashing them out once they make those options available. And so they'll launch them in January when everyone has low balances again

Khatl gets it ("they know a bunch of people have large Bilt cash balances" and "they'll launch them in January when everyone has low balances again" ...that's a BINGO.); Tom is deflecting (*grunts at those who shill*)

I get it. I would like to capture those as well. I would like everyone else to be able to capture those as well. But, as it stands, I'm capturing about $2k in value from Bilt Cash. I wouldn't call that being a shill. I'm just making the most of what I can.

Here's my calculations thus far: 5x Accelerator ($1,000 BC for that extra 25K points, $250 in-value); "Gold" Hotel credit 2x, one before July, one after July to stack with the other hotel credits ($200 total, no, I'm not going to use $100/mo, that's absurd.) $10 x 11 (because started February, so 11 months, instead of 12) x 3 for the $10 Lyft, Walgreens, Grubhub credits ($330). Baseline that's $780 in-value. Now, without Blacklane or Blade (or prepaying a lot of rent), I'm gonna be out about $700 BC. (And, I'd really rather not include those rent-fee-offsets, because compared to BILT 1.0, that's a farce in-and-of-itself. I'm assuming that's how you got $2k. Now, where's L3 to suggest it should be worth $3k... *sigh*)

not to cosplay as L3 but not including rent-fee offsets makes your entire calculation pointless. you're focused on bilt 1.0. that doesnt exist anymore. what does exist is cards out today. So you can compare to another 2x card like venture/venture x or Amex BBP. Palladiums value prop absolutely murders those cards in value and its not even close

I do think they will probably slowly devalue over time as the rewards are so strong right now. but for now the getting is good!!

As a note, you can use one of the $200 semi-annual hotel credits and one of the $100 monthly Bilt Cash credits together on a single booking. So, it's really 2x $300. I've done it and my wife has done it.

As for the extra points from the accelerators, I transfer those to a specific program in which I redeem for substantially more than 1cpp. I realize that's not your value but it is my value.

I absolutely wish those other credits open up. But, if they don't, I'm doing okay. And, it sounds like Harold (below) is doing okay.

That being said, while Bilt is my everyday and dining card, my travel expenses go on a different card. Because Bilt is not the best card for those expenses.

Bilt has ROTTEN travel protections. And, while Bilt (and the Citi Strata Elite) is a World Legend MasterCard and MasterCard states that World Legend has Priority Pass WITH OTHER AIRPORT EXPERIENCES, both cards have lounges only. There's a class action waiting to happen.

Given these criticisms, I'm certainly not a shill.

Let's say Bilt Cash offsets $780 in expenses that you would otherwise pay. Minus the $495 annual fee. You're ahead. I don't see where you are "out." I don't see where you are losing. Some of your comments sound as if you feel cheated.

I don't say I'm "out" $X on the Amex Platinum because I don't use the Oura credit. I don't feel cheated. I focus on the credits I can use.

And, you're earning 3x on $25k of spending. And, you have the occasional opportunity for outsized transfer bonuses. For me, the extra 1X on the $25k alone covers my annual fee. Now add an extra 1k points each Rent Day. If someone is a Hyatt fan, they have a hard on by this point.