My Quick Bilt 2.0 Review and Palladium Application
The recent launch of Bilt Card 2.0 marks a fundamental shift, but not necessarily a better one. For years, the original Bilt Mastercard was a “unicorn” in the credit card world. While I wouldn’t call it an amazing card, it was a simple, no-annual-fee tool that allowed renters to earn 1 point per dollar on their biggest monthly expense with virtually no hoops to jump through.
With the new credit card lineup consisting of the Blue, Obsidian, and Palladium cards, that simplicity has vanished, replaced by a complex system that prioritizes heavy spending over basic utility and the introduction of a new currency that makes we’re still not sure how valuable it is.
Messy Rollout
The rollout itself was also messy, starting with leaks a few days before the official January 14, 2026 announcement. Bilt released a video soon after downplaying the leaked information, only for the actual release to confirm most of those details.
To make matters worse, it seemed like the launch was rushed as they had to change eligibility terms for welcome bonuses immediately after the release to clarify that old Bilt Mastercard cardholders are eligible. They also admitted they are still “figuring out” certain aspects of the program, and even gave out some inaccurate information on their reddit AMA.
Rent Day is still mystery after February 1st. We don’t know exactly how it will work going forward, and neither does Bilt.
There were also banana jokes and a meme shared on Instagram (and then deleted) that didn’t go over well with most Bilt members.
Bilt 2.0
But now let’s move over to the details. The most complicated change is the introduction of Bilt Cash. Under the old system, you simply paid rent and got points. Now, while Bilt claims you can still pay housing costs with “no fee,” earning points is no longer automatic. You now earn 4% back in Bilt Cash on everyday spending, which you can then use to unlock your rent points.
Specifically, you must redeem $30 of Bilt Cash to unlock 1,000 points on your rent or mortgage. If you don’t spend enough on the card for groceries or gas, you either have to pay a 3% transaction fee out of pocket to get your points or simply earn nothing at all on your housing payment.
And if there’s any value to use Bilt Cash elsewhere, as they have promised, then these are no longer “rent credit cards”. But we do not know for sure how valuable Bilt Cash is. We do know that it expires at the end of the year and you can only roll over up to $100 of Bilt Cash to the next year.
There’s also a major change in the actual process or paying rent (and now your mortgage), which wasn’t mentioned much. Unlike the old system, your rent or mortgage will no longer be charged to your card. Payment will be made with a bank account via ACH, and then you will receive the points, if you choose to pay the 3% fee or cover it with Bilt Cash. That means that you won’t be able to float your rent for a few weeks and it will be immediately deducted from your bank account.
Another important change is that the new cards will only offer secondary rental car coverage (Page 12), and not primary coverage.
Palladium Card Worth It?
With all that said, I’ll still take a good bonus and decent benefits for at least a year. I decided to sign up for the Bilt Palladium Card mainly for the very-limited-time welcome offer. I would not have signed up for Blue or Obsidian, or even Palladium is they didn’t offer that extra bonus.
I was able to stack the standard 50,000-point bonus with a special 50,000-point “5x spending” offer from The Points Guy (TPG), totaling up to 100,000 Bilt points. When the cards launched, there was no mention of an expiration date on that TPG bonus, but it ended up being just a 24-hour special. It expired on 12PM ET and I was lucky to apply around 10:30AM. This extra bonus is similar to the unadvertised bonus offered on the old Bilt Mastercard.
Bilt has some great partners such as World of Hyatt and Alaska Atmos, so 100,000 points can easily be worth about $1,500. That’s more than enough to justify the $495 annual fee for the first year at least.
There are some benefits that provide a built of extra value as well:
- $300 Bilt Cash as part of the signup bonus (worth 10K Bilt Points)
- $200 Bilt Cash annually (worth 6.6K Bilt Points)
- 2X Bilt Points and 4% Bilt Cash on most spend (excludes housing payments, taxes etc)
- Bilt Gold Status (which can come in handy for transfer bonuses)
- $400 Bilt Travel Hotel credit annually ($200 semi-annually and requires booking 2+ night)
- plus some other things like cell phone insurance, Priority Pass etc.
I’ll spare you the complicated math that has been shared all over and I’ll say that there’s some ongoing value there. But I would not prepay $495 for it. So for now I plan to close or downgrade the card before the second year.
My Application
As I mentioned above I decided to go for the Bilt Palladium credit card. I applied through the TPG link which give you an extra 5X earning (up to 50K) for 5 days in addition to the 50K bonus. There was no mention of the extra bonus on the application page, but hopefully it works out.
I selected the Bilt Palladium card with the $495 annual fee. Then it was time to pick the design between Brushed Palladium and Mirror Finish Palladium. There’s was a mention of a $50 fee in the leaked code for the Mirror finish, but I didn’t see it mentioned anywhere in the application process.
After then I entered some personal information and hit “submit”. A few seconds later I got the approval screen with a credit limit of $35,000 which is way more than the $7,000 on the old Bilt Mastercard.
Since I already have the old Bilt Mastercard, there’s no hard inquiry. But this card will still show as a new account in my credit report. I accepted the offer!
In the next step I was asked if I wanted to transfer my balance to the new card. I chose to do so in hopes that it might count as bonus spend as it is treated as a purchase. But I highly doubt it and I think that was confirmed somewhere in the reddit AMA.
Then Bilt gave me the option to keep or close the old Bilt Mastercard, which would be converted to a Wells Fargo Autograph if kept open.
Guru’s Wrap-up
I think Bilt 2.0 is overly complicated. If you had the old card for the simplicity of paying your rent and earning easy points, then you won’t like the new cards. They’re not really rent cards anyway.
But even in general, the Blue and Obsidian cards don’t really make sense for anyone with the lack of a signup bonus. The Palladium on the other hand is worth considering for the first year. I think it’s worth paying $495 for a bonus 100K and a few decent benefits. After that I may downgrade it to Blue or close it.
Is it worth it with just the 50K bonus? Possibly, but I might have skipped it at least for now and hope for a better bonus in the future.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think!
