The Bilt Mastercard is no longer on a waitlist — you can finally earn rewards on rent (without paying a fee)

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• Bilt Rewards has finally ended its waitlist for the Bilt Mastercard®.
• Wells Fargo now issues the credit card, making applications widely available.
• You can now earn up to 1 million Bilt Rewards points by referring friends and family.
• Read Insider’s guide to the best rewards credit cards.

Since its inception, the Bilt Mastercard® has required would-be applicants to join a lengthy waitlist.

It’s understandable why: This card allows you to earn 1 point per dollar on rent purchases — with no fees. You can generally expect to pay upwards of 3% in convenience fees when paying rent with a credit card, so the ability to side-step this fee while earning rewards is an incredible feat.

As of March 28, 2022, the waitlist for this card is over. The Bilt Mastercard® is newly issued by Wells Fargo, and applications are open to everyone.

Read more: Bilt Mastercard review

Bilt Rewards gains momentum as it secures the backing of Wells Fargo

It’s both refreshing and uncommon to see true innovation in the credit card rewards world. Bilt Rewards has achieved that, as it becomes the no-brainer option for paying what is likely your biggest monthly bill: rent. You’ll evade convenience fees and earn rewards. Even if your landlord doesn’t accept digital or credit card payments, Bilt will send them a check. 

When you pay rent through the Bilt Rewards app, you’ll earn 250 points per payment. That’s a tokenistic number of rewards — again, the biggest benefit of paying through the app is that you won’t be charged fees.

Read more: Earn points for paying rent without any fees with the Bilt Rewards program

However, if you open the Bilt Mastercard® annual fee Bilt Mastercard®, you can earn 1 point per dollar on rent (on up to $50,000 in rent payments per year) — as well as:

• 3 points per dollar on dining
• 2 points per dollar on travel (when booked directly with the airline, hotel, rental car agency, or cruise company)
• 1 point per dollar on all other eligible purchases

Note that you must use your card at least five times per billing period to earn rewards.

The rewards you earn can be transferred to:

• American Airlines
• Air Canada Aeroplan
• Air France/KLM (called Flying Blue)
• Cathay Pacific Asia Miles (coming mid-April 2022)
• Emirates
• Hawaiian Airlines
• Hyatt
• IHG
• Turkish Airlines
• United Airlines
• Virgin Atlantic (Virgin Points)

Read more: You can now earn United Airlines and Cathay Pacific miles just by paying your rent

Transferring to travel partners is the best way to get large value for your rewards — though you can also use your points for:

• Offsetting rent payments at a rate of 0.55 cents per point
• Fitness classes (SoulCycle, Rumble, Y7 Studio)
• The Bilt Collection (rotating catalogue of various art, decor, and apparel)

Bottom line

You can now earn one of the best transferable rewards currencies by opening a Wells Fargo Card: The Bilt Mastercard® transfers to popular airline and hotel loyalty programs. In this sense, Wells Fargo has joined the ranks of Chase, Citi, Capital One, and American Express in issuing credit cards that accrue flexible travel rewards.

Bilt is confident that it will continue to add high-value partners to make its rewards program even more enticing.