Today Bilt 2.0 goes live! Activate your card!

A little while back I posted about how Bilt, the credit card ecosystem that allows to earn points on rent since a few years now, is changing: Bilt 2.0 was announced about 3 weeks ago and brought with it a slew of changes. This included the addition of points on mortgages besides rent and a complicated way of earning 4% Bilt cash on ‘everyday’ (non-rent/mortgage) purchases to unlock points on rent and mortgages; all this driven by three new credit cards, of which we decided to transfer to the most premium Bilt card, the Palladium card. You can read my full analysis of Bilt 2.0, as well as the ways to use Bilt Cash.

Well, Bilt 2.0 has gone live as of today. Let’s have a quick look at what that means exactly, and then how to activate your new card.

Bilt 2.0 is live, and all the changes it brings with it, as of today!

I wrote a full analysis of Bilt 2.0 when the details were first released, and I also covered how Bilt then backtracked to to make some additional changes when they saw a rather negative response to the initial value proposition. I also covered what the new ‘Bilt Cash’ concept is about, and how Bilt Cash can be redeemed. However, I’ll briefly give a rundown here of the key changes that are now live:

Mortgages will now also earn you points if paid through Bilt.
Rent and mortgage payments will now be pulled directly from a linked bank account, and not be placed as a balance on the Bilt card (if you use another card, such as the Alaska Atmos cards, the balance will still end up on those cards).
Every ‘everyday’ purchase (non-rent or mortgage) will earn you 4% Bilt cash in addition to Bilt points. The number of Bilt points you earn depend on the category and the Bilt card you use.
You have to ‘unlock’ points on rent or mortgages every month by completing spend requirements on ‘everyday’ purchases. There are two methods: either you ‘redeem’ Bilt cash towards that purpose, or you forego earning Bilt Cash entirely, in order to earn Bilt points on rent or mortgage in a tiered system. For the latter, you’ll need to spend at least 25% of the Dollar value of your rent/mortgage to get 0.5x points on rent/mortgage. For both methods, you’ll need to spend at least 75% of the dollar vlaue of your rent/mortgage to get 1x points.
There are now three Bilt cards: Blue, Obsidian and Palladium, at $0, $95 and $495 annual fees. My husband and I transitioned to the latter, the Palladium card. It is the most rewarding card of them in my opinion, with a 2x point earning rate on everyday purchases, $400 Bilt cash to be spent in the Bilt travel portal, and a unique 50.000 point welcome bonus, among some other things.

Here’s how you activate your new card

Everybody who transitioned to a a card out of the Bilt 2.0 portfolio should have received their cards in the mail over the last week. I had posted to the Points to Seats instagram with a brief unboxing, but here’s what the Palladium card looked like on arrival:

On the right side of this fancy folding affair, is the actual physical Bilt palladium card. We chose the mirror option, which indeed is highly reflective, with a very pretty, almost bronzen finish. Note that on the bottom-left corner will be the card holder’s name, which I have erased for security reasons. Behind the card are instructions on how to activate, which was as easy as tapping the card to the top of your phone with the Bilt app opened:

Once you finish the activation and hit ‘done’, Bilt will confirm whether you want to earn the 4% Bilt Cash to redeem against all sort of things (including rent/mortgages), or whether you want to go with method 2, where you complete minimum spend ina. tiered system to earn increasing amounts of points on rent/mortgage.

Until 2/10, Bilt Palladium earns 3x points rather than 2x if paying through Apple, Google or Samsung Pay

This is something I happened to see because I looked through my husband’s Bilt app on his phone. It turns out that, as an activation bonus, Bilt is giving 3x points on everyday purchases, rather than the normal 2x, until February 10 2026:

However, make sure you read the terms carefully, as not all purchases qualify:

It’s pretty cool that Bilt does this. 3x points on Bilt Palladium brings it to a league where it’s as good as many competitors’ card offerings and their bonus categories, including Capital One’s Venture family, the Chase Sapphire Family, and Citibank’s Strata family. But, only until 2/10!

My strategy for completing the spend requirement on the Palladium card’s welcome bonus

I also wanted to spend a moment explaining how we intend to completed the spending requirement on the Bilt palladium card, to earn the bonus. The bonus on the Palladium card is 50.000 points when you spend $4000 in 3 months. In my view, the best way to maximize on this challenge is by ensuring you’re spending on the right categories, so that you don’t sacrifice purchases from other categories that would have earned more points with other cards. Bilt Palladium earns 2x on all ‘everyday’ purchases, so here are my thoughts:

Currently, just for the 1st quarter of 2026, the Chase Freedom Flex earns 5x points on dining purchases. So, it’d be sad to forego 5x points there for 2x on Bilt Palladium.
Groceries earn me 4x points on Amex Goldm, so, again, better to use that than Bilt Palladium.
3x purchases wouldn’t ‘lose’ much but putting them on Bilt – just 1 point per Dollar spent.

So, here’s what we are going to do: first, we will buy points with Air Canada Aeroplan, who currently have a 80% bonus going on. We have now redeemed through Air Canada twice for flights between New York and Frankfurt on Singapore Airlines and would be happy to keep doing that. With the 80% bonus, it brings the price of the points down to a point where they can be worth the investment.

We will also put much of our travel spending onto the Bilt Palladium, since we typically only receive 2x with that anyway. This is good timing since we are still in the process of booking hotels and such for our trip in November, to Vienna. Also any non-dining or grocery purchases we will put onto Bilt, unless we find that there is no other choice: in the end, the priority would be the welcome bonus.

*Redeem Bilt points for Japan Airlines business class.*

Summary

Today, February 7th, Bilt 2.0 has gone live. This means that the new system for earning points on rent (and now also mortgages) is also live, and you can activate and start using your Bilt 2.0 card! As a surprise, if you use your Bilt Palladium card to pay for purchases through Apple, Google or Samsung Pay, you can get an extra point per dollar until 2/10 (3x instead of 2x). So, get on going! Activate your card and complete that sweet Palladium welcome bonus!