Table of Contents
If you’re a renter who likes maximizing your rewards-earning potential, you’ll love the Bilt Mastercard®. This card has an extremely interesting program that allows you to earn rewards in unusual ways.
You can earn rewards on your rent payments (even if you pay by check or through a portal like PayPal) as well as on other types of spending. You can then redeem those rewards in lots of different ways—for example on Amazon, as payment for flights and hotels, or even as partial payment for a new home of your own.
The only thing to watch out for is the unclear cashback rates for various redemption options. 1 point won’t necessarily be worth 1 cent, as with many rewards programs, so you’ll need to do some research to find out which redemption options offer the best value.
Quick Review
If you like the sound of a credit card with easy cashback rewards and low fees, you’ll definitely like the Bilt Mastercard®, issued by Wells Fargo. This card has a number of attractive features, including no annual fee, cell phone insurance, and other premium benefits.
However, the most exciting feature is the opportunity to earn rewards and build credit with your monthly rent payments. This makes it easier than ever to reap rewards from your credit card.
You don’t even necessarily need to have a landlord who lets you pay your rent with a credit card. The Bilt Mastercard® will work for almost any rent payment method (with a few exceptions, such as payments through Zelle or through your mobile or digital wallet). Even if your landlord only accepts checks, you can still use your card to pay through the Bilt app, and Bilt will send a check on your behalf.
And there’s a wealth of options for redeeming your rewards points. You can spend them on travel or at Amazon, for example, or even redeem them as money toward your next rent payment or a down payment to buy a new home. Plus, you’ll earn interest on your points once you’ve accumulated more than 25,000 in the space of a year.
The only problem with the Bilt Mastercard® is the complexity of all the different rewards redemption values, which makes it difficult to know how you should spend your points to get the best deal. But since the card has no annual fee, it’s still worth adding to your wallet in the likely event that you don’t yet have a way to earn rewards for your rent payments.
Bilt Mastercard® Important Details
Basic Card Details
- Credit card issuer: Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.
- Annual fee: $0
- APR: 19.99%–27.99% (variable)
- Rewards rate: Unspecified
- Credit limit: Unspecified
Additional Information
- No foreign transaction fees.
- Earn rewards for paying your rent.
- 1:1 points transfer to many other travel rewards programs.
- Get double points on all non-rent purchases plus other bonus offers on the first day of every month.
- Five card transactions per month required to activate rewards earning.
- Flexible payment dates.
- Manage your account through the Wells Fargo Mobile® app.
- Zero liability protection.
- Up to $600 cell phone insurance against theft or damage when you use your card to pay your monthly phone bill.
- World Elite Mastercard® benefits (e.g., 24/7 concierge service; 3 months’ coverage against theft and damage for your Bilt Mastercard® purchases; and exclusive offers on ride-sharing, online shopping, food delivery, and more).
Bilt Mastercard® Feature Breakdown
Learn more about how to use the Bilt Mastercard® and what it has to offer to decide whether it’s the best card for you.
Fees
- Annual fee: $0
- Introductory balance transfer fee: 3% or $5 (whichever is greater) for 120 days from account opening
- Balance transfer fee: Up to 5% for each balance transfer (with a minimum of $5)
- Cash advance fee: $10 or 5% (whichever is greater)
- Foreign transaction fee: None
- Late payment fee: Up to $40
Interest Rates
- Purchase APR: 19.99%–27.99% (variable)
- Balance transfer APR: 19.99%–27.99% (variable)
- Cash advance APR: 26.99% (variable)
- Minimum interest charge: $1
If you don’t pay off your statement balance in full each month, you’ll have to pay interest on your Bilt Mastercard®. The interest you’ll be charged each year is based on your credit card APR (“annual percentage rate,” also known as the yearly interest rate). There are potentially different APRs for purchases, balance transfers, and cash advances.
The exact interest rate you’ll get depends on your creditworthiness. The Bilt Mastercard® has three possible offers for the purchase and balance transfer APRs, while the cash advance APR is the same regardless of creditworthiness.
Grace Period
The Bilt Mastercard® gives you a 25-day grace period. A grace period is a window of time, which starts on the first day of each new billing cycle, during which you can pay your bills in full without racking up any interest charges.
If you’ve paid your bill in full by the due date, you won’t incur interest for your purchases during the grace period. On the other hand, if you carry a balance from previous billing cycles, you’ll pay interest on top of any credit card payments you make during the grace period.
Rewards
To earn rewards on your Bilt Mastercard®, you’ll need to make at least five completed transactions in a statement period.
Once you’ve done this, you’ll be able to earn points on rent and other purchases for the rest of the month.
For most of your Bilt Mastercard® purchases (with the usual exclusions for things like cash advances, balance transfers, and gambling), you’ll earn 1 point per $1 you spend.
Here are the other Bilt rewards you can expect:
- Rent: You’ll get 1 point per $1 you spend on rent paid through the Bilt App with your Bilt Mastercard®. But these earnings are capped at a maximum of 50,000 points a year. Interestingly, there’s also a lower limit for your rent rewards: if your rent payment is under $250, you’ll still earn 250 points when you pay. But you can only make rent payments to one property per month.
- Travel: You’ll get 2 points (1 base point + 1 bonus point) per $1 you spend on purchases made directly with airlines, hotels, motels, resorts, cruise lines, and car rental firms.
- Dining: You’ll get 3 points (1 base point + 2 bonus points) per $1 you spend at restaurants (including fast food), bakeries, and other eating and drinking establishments.
As you earn more rewards, you’ll also advance through different tiers (blue, silver, and gold). The higher tiers will give you some additional benefits like interest on your rewards points, free gifts, and access to a homeownership concierge service for help with buying your own home.
Unfortunately, the Bilt rewards program doesn’t include mortgages, so homeowners won’t be able to fully benefit from all of the features of the Bilt Mastercard®.
Rewards Redemption
You’ll have numerous options for redeeming your Bilt rewards points. For example, you can:
- Put them towards your next month’s rent payment.
- Save them and put them towards a down payment on a home.
- Use them for shopping on Amazon.com.
- Spend them on booking fitness classes at selected gyms and studios.
- Transfer them to travel points programs like Emirates Skywards, Asia Miles, and more.
- Use them to cover all or part of the cost of booking flights, hotel stays, car rentals, and other activities through the Bilt travel portal.
Bilt rewards redemption is very flexible, but the problem is that it’s unclear how much your points are worth with most of the redemption options. The Bilt website specifies that 10,000 Bilt Points are worth $125 in travel purchases (which means you’ll end up with a cashback rate equivalent to 2.5%), and transfers to travel points programs offer a 1:1 exchange for the different types of points. Those two options likely give you the best deal on points redemption.
However, the other redemption options are more confusing. The Bilt website merely gives a few examples of what you can purchase, and how many points it’ll cost (e.g., you can book a fitness class with 1,600 points or more), but the card agreement says simply that “redemption values for reward options vary.”
This means it’s hard to know how you should redeem your points to get the best returns and what cashback rates you’ll get.
Cell Phone Protection
A particularly nice benefit of the Bilt Mastercard® is that it comes with up to $600 of cell phone protection against theft or damage, as long as you use it to pay your monthly phone bill (subject to a $25 deductible).
Other Features and Benefits
The Bilt Mastercard® comes with World Elite Mastercard® benefits plus some very worthwhile extras. For example, you’ll get:
- Flexible payment dates: You can change your Bilt Mastercard® payment due date (although you won’t be able to select dates between the 29th and 31st), making it easier to control your budget.
- BiltProtect: This is a way to pay your rent without using your available credit. When you use BiltProtect, Bilt takes money directly from your bank account to pay any rent charges on your card statement within 48 hours (a bit like a debit card). This way, you’ll still earn points on your rent payment, but you won’t use up your available credit.
- Purchase security: This insures your Bilt card purchases against theft or damage for 90 days after you buy them, during which time you can get a refund (of up to $10,000 per claim) for the cost of repairing or replacing an item.
- Trip cancellation and interruption protection: This is a type of protection that reimburses you if you book a passenger fare with your Bilt Mastercard®, and your trip is then interrupted or canceled (as long as it’s for one of the reasons covered in the agreement).
- Trip delay reimbursement: This means you can get reimbursed for extra expenses (e.g., meals) when your trip is delayed more than 6 hours due to reasons like bad weather, air traffic control delays, or technical problems.
- Concierge service: This is a complimentary service to help you with tasks like booking dinner or event reservations and locating hard-to-find items such as tickets for a sold-out show.
- Zero liability protection: This means you won’t be held responsible for any unauthorized transactions on your card, as long as you report them promptly.
- Doordash: Currently, you’ll get a 3-month DashPass membership for free as a new Bilt Mastercard® customer. Plus, both new and existing customers get $5 off their first order each month.
- Lyft credits: Currently, when you use Lyft for three rides in a month, you’ll get a $5 Lyft credit if you pay with your Bilt Mastercard®.
Cash Advances
A cash advance is when you use your credit card to withdraw money from an ATM. Not all credit cards allow cash advances, but the Bilt Mastercard® does.
However, there’s a fee for this service. The fee is either 3% of the amount you withdraw or $10—whichever is greater. There’s also a high APR for cash advances, so try to avoid making them unless it’s an absolute emergency.
Balance Transfers
A balance transfer is when you move debt from one credit card to another, and it’s a common way to consolidate debt.
Not all credit cards allow balance transfers, but the Bilt Mastercard® does. The balance transfer APR may be the same as the purchase APR at 19.99%–27.99% (variable).
As with many credit cards, there’s also a fee each time you make a balance transfer: for the first 120 days, you’ll pay a reduced fee of either $5 or 3% of the amount of each balance transfer (whichever is greater). After that, the fee goes up to 5% for each balance transfer or $5 (whichever is greater).
Foreign Transactions
It’s common for credit cards to have foreign transaction fees. This fee is often 1%–3% of the transaction amount.
The Bilt Mastercard® is a Wells Fargo card. Although there’s sometimes a foreign transaction fee on Wells Fargo cards, there’s no foreign transaction fee on the Bilt card.
Credit Limit
Wells Fargo doesn’t specify what credit limit you can expect when you apply for the Bilt Mastercard®. However, if you already have a Bilt Mastercard® you may be able to get a credit limit increase from Wells Fargo by contacting customer service, who will tell you whether you’re eligible.
Automatic credit line increases are also a possibility for some cardholders. If you’re hoping for a higher credit limit, be extra careful about paying your credit card bills on time and, where necessary, take extra steps to improve your credit score.
Credit Reporting
Credit reporting is an important part of maintaining good credit. Your credit report consists of the information your lenders pass on to the credit bureaus each month. However, your lenders aren’t under any legal obligation to report your credit history.
Fortunately, Wells Fargo regularly reports to the credit bureaus. You can choose to have your Bilt Mastercard® payments reported to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. This means you can maintain your credit scores with the three most important bureaus—as long as you use your card in a responsible manner.
Credit Score Requirements
The Bilt Mastercard® website doesn’t specify what credit score you’ll need to be eligible for the card. It’s likely that you’ll need a good-to-excellent credit score, probably 690 or above.
Application and Approval
You can apply for the Bilt Mastercard® on the Bilt website.
Bilt say that they can usually approve applicants in less than 30 seconds, but that they may need to do a manual review for some applications. In the latter case, you’ll receive a decision within 30 days. So if you currently have a pending Bilt Mastercard® application, you should hear from them within the next month.
Customer Service
If you need help with your Bilt Mastercard®, you can contact Bilt Support by sending them an email through their website or calling the customer service phone number on the back of your credit card.
Authorized users
You can get additional cards for authorized users if you wish to have one (or more) person added to your Bilt account.
If you want to add someone, contact Bilt, and they’ll send you a card under the name of the authorized user.
Should You Get the Bilt Mastercard® Credit Card?
FinanceJar verdict
The Bilt Mastercard® credit card gives you an innovative way to score cashback rewards, and it’s definitely a wallet booster if you’re a renter and have good enough credit to qualify.
It’s unfortunate that Bilt is so vague about how much their points are worth, but they’re definitely a good option for booking travel, and there are likely to be other redemption options that’ll give you lucrative cashback rewards, especially considering the card comes without the cost of an annual fee.
Just watch out for potentially high APR if you think you’ll be likely to carry a balance on your card or use it for a balance transfer.
Who is this card for?
- Borrowers who don’t want to waste much effort on rewards earning: Looking for ways to get points can sometimes be more effort than it’s worth. Unless that’s your idea of fun, a card that lets you earn rewards without too much thought probably sounds preferable to you. Hardly any other credit card on the market makes points-earning so effortless as the Bilt Mastercard® does, so it’s a great choice for anyone who wants an easy way to save as they spend.
- Renters saving for a down payment on a new home: If you’re currently renting a house or apartment with a view to eventually buy property, the Bilt Mastercard® offers a golden opportunity to speed up this process with rewards you can save toward a down payment on your own home. Unfortunately, the Bilt website is vague about what cashback rate you’ll get if you redeem your points in this way, so it’s unclear whether this is a lucrative points redemption option; however, it’s certainly an interesting one.
Comparable Cards
If you’re trying to decide whether the Bilt Mastercard® is worth applying for, take a look at how it compares to the other options on offer.
