---
title: 'New Bilt 2.0 Cards - Huge Update (My Initial Thoughts)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=K6n8XR1C7gI'
video_id: 'K6n8XR1C7gI'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 1056
---

# New Bilt 2.0 Cards - Huge Update (My Initial Thoughts)

> Source: [New Bilt 2.0 Cards - Huge Update (My Initial Thoughts)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=K6n8XR1C7gI)

## Summary

The video provides an initial analysis of the newly announced Bilt 2.0 credit card program, which introduces three new cards—Blue, Obsidian, and Platinum—with a complex new system for earning points on rent and mortgage. While the old Bilt program was a simple no-brainer for earning points on housing expenses, the new program requires cardholders to earn 'Bilt cash' from everyday spending and then exchange it to unlock points on rent, making it much more complicated. The creator shares both positives and negatives, emphasizing that while the value is still there for heavy spenders, the simplicity that made Bilt popular is gone.

### Key Points

- **Three New Bilt Cards Introduced** [01:58] — Bilt Blue (no annual fee), Bilt Obsidian ($95 annual fee), and Bilt Platinum ($495 annual fee) are the new card options. Each offers different multipliers and credits.
- **Obsidian Travel Credit Restrictions** [03:39] — The $100 hotel credit on Obsidian is split into two $50 credits per half-year, but requires a minimum 2-night booking through the Bilt travel portal to use.
- **New Bilt Cash Feature Explained** [05:10] — All cards earn 4% Bilt cash on all purchases, a separate currency that can be redeemed for statement credits, Lyft rides, or used to unlock points on rent/mortgage.
- **How Earning Points on Rent Now Works** [09:45] — To earn up to 1x points on rent, you must first spend on the card to earn Bilt cash, then exchange that cash at a rate of $30 Bilt cash per 1,000 points unlocked.
- **Effective Point Earning Rate Example** [12:37] — With $1,500 non-rent spend on Platinum, you earn 3,000 points (2x) plus unlock 2,000 points on rent, totaling 5,000 points – an effective 3.33 points per dollar.
- **Program Shift: No-Brainer to Brainer** [15:06] — The old Bilt program was straightforward with no fees and easy point earning on rent. The new 2.0 program is complicated, requiring math and specific spending patterns.

### Conclusion

The Bilt 2.0 program fundamentally changes the value proposition from an effortless way to earn points on rent to a more complex system that rewards heavy non-rent spenders. While the points remain valuable, the added complexity may turn away casual users who valued the original simplicity.

## Transcript

is here. And the reviews right out of the gate so far are mostly negative. So, just going to be my initial thoughts on all this stuff because I was invited out see here, I'm not in my normal YouTube studio. But, I did want to get my
could because there's a lot to cover here. So, I'm not going to focus on so much the minor details, all the facts and stuff, the multipliers. We'll go really wanted to share here are my thoughts and opinions about these
overall changes because this is a massive update and Built 2.0 is very different than what Built 1.0 looked like. What I would actually say is that program because you could get that Built
and pay no transaction fees as long as you use that card five times in a statement period. But whereas that old program was a no-brainer, this new 2.0 program is a brainer, meaning that it's kind of confusing and complicated for
this new program. There's definitely going to be some math here that people are going to be forced to do with this new built program in terms of earning well as earning points on non-rengage spend. And so, I think Built's biggest
hurdle here outside of those negative comments on Reddit and stuff like that it. But Bill's biggest hurdle is really going to be overcoming the complication that these numbers have for people who just might not be numbers oriented. So
the way here, let's go ahead and jump right into things by talking about these three new cards and what benefits, what features they're going to have. But I stuff because there's a ton of other articles and videos out there that you
walks through it. But then after that, we're really going to dive into some of and negative, as well as some other math that I think people aren't really And then, like I said, this is just my initial thoughts here. So, I'm trying to
give the positives and the negatives. And we're going to make a full video walking through the entire new Built 2.0 program once I'm back in my studio. So, jumping over to Built's website here, we have first the Built Blue card, which
be their baseline option for people who want to avoid that annual fee. Then next we have the Built Obsidian card coming in with a $95 annual fee. And then finally, the Built Palladium card, their top tier option at $495 per year. Now,
on these three cards, I'm actually going to avoid that first line there under each one of these where it says up to 1x points on rent and mortgage. And that's through this stuff and I've gone through the information, I think earning points
considered completely separately now. And so, we'll talk about that in just a here, let's just ignore that earning points on housing stuff and just focus competition and see what their multipliers are and how they hold up in
fee built blue card, that's going to be 1x points on everyday spend. Obviously, surface since that's kind of the baseline for most credit cards nowadays, But where things really get interesting is when you go up to the $95 built
see some more valuable multipliers at 3x points on your choice of dining or one of those categories. And that's going to be 3x points on one of those things for up to 25K per year or at least for groceries. It says right here,
up to 25K and spend per year earning 3x on this card. You can also earn 2x everyday spend. And then over on the Built Platium card, that higher top tier annual fee card at $495 per year, it becomes a very powerful potential
Venture X competitor earning 2x points per dollar on everyday spend. Now, have an annual fee, you do hope that there's some credits that can help to of that fee. So, obviously with the no annual fee card, there's just no annual
credits there. But then for the Built Obsidian card and the $95 annual fee, you do get up to $100 in built travel hotel credits and that's going to be split up into twice per year a $50 statement credit. So you have one of
those $50 credits for the first half of the year and then another one for the thing I want to point out here that is kind of a negative in my opinion and it's not super clear unless you read the fine print is that that travel credit
getting $50 in the first half of the year or $50 in the second half of the qualifying bookings. And it says in the fine print here that you need to make hotel bookings that are two nights or longer through the built travel portal.
get normal value from this credit? And the answer is yes. but at the same time to read the fine print there because it's not as easy to use as it might seem on the surface. And then moving over to the 495 built palladium card, there's
have to take note of. So that is going to be $200 of built cash, which we'll minute, but that is going to be issued annually. And uh what they also point out here is that up to $100 of built cash is what rolls over from one
in mind here as well. And then similar to the Obsidian card, there is going to be a $400 built travel hotel credit here as well applied twice per year. So $200 first half of the year, $200 second half of the year. And again, if you read the
qualified eligible bookings here at a use as some other credits out there on note of that. Now, speaking of Built Cash, let's go over that next here
massive change here in the whole Built ecosystem. So, what you'll see is that all three of these cards earn 4% built cash on purchases. All purchases Now, this is where I think it's going to get confusing for the average person or
only are you earning points on your spend with a built card, you're also earning cash back in form of built cash at this time. Now that cash back is not the same as like cash back you can deposit into your bank account, but it
should be somewhat close to a 1:1 uh ratio for exchanging that built cash for other things. Uh like for example, redeeming for statement credits on on lift rides or for fitness classes or booking hotels through built travel.
gave and there's going to be some other stuff in the near future that they're going to be allowing people to exchange their built cash for as well. But the allow you to do with that built cash is essentially exchange it for unlocking
points on your mortgage or rent. And I'll explain this with some math that I because again, this is very unscripted here and I'll be more organized with an number that you want to keep in mind here in terms of exchanging built cash
for points on your rent or mortgage is that $30 of built cash is equal to unlocking 1,000 points on your rent or mortgage. Now, I also wanted to quickly mention that there are going to finally be some welcome bonuses on these cards
getting the best welcome offer. But on the Built Blue card with no annual fee, you're getting $100 of built cash as a signup bonus. Uh you just apply, get that for the Built Obsidian card coming in at $95 per year, $200 built cash when
you apply and get approved. So again, no spend attached to that. And that's sort of an initial way to build up that built cash balance. And then over on the Built Palladium card 495 card, you're going to get $300 of built cash when you apply
and get approved along with the opportunity to get a $50,000 built point bonus plus gold status. So after you spend $4,000 on everyday purchases in unlock those two things there as well. So this is the first true built welcome
bonus we've seen for earning built points. Now, in being here at this event there does seem to be some confusion going around online as to who's actually eligible for these bonuses. So, if you're converting from Built 1.0 to
seem like it actually excludes you from they made it very clear everyone is going to be eligible for this bonus. So, Palladium card. I am going to be able to get uh 50,000 bill points after 4K of
spend in the first 3 months. uh as well as anybody out there who's a newcomer to that stuff, there's some other features and additional benefits that I'm really in-depth review of this stuff. But what you will see if you scroll down on their
website is that each one of these cards has no foreign transaction fees, which is nice. Each one's also going to have a cellular wireless telephone protection there's some other travel protections with the built Palladium card having the
features. Again, there's a lot of stuff this is just my initial thoughts. All right, so let's go ahead now and just jump over to a desk view where I've written down some math with an example
here of earning points uh using the built palladium card, 2x points per dollar on everything, non-rengage, as well as 4% built cash on those transactions that you can then use to unlock points on your mortgage or rent
payments. Because if you can understand how this math works, then you start to see why there are some people that do see some positives in getting a card complicated and why people are frustrated. All right. Now, again, this
is a very spontaneous video, so excuse my bad handwriting here. You can roast me in the comments. But if we said that our rent was $3,000, what Built made clear at the event was that there are going to be no fees charged for that
were seeing on Reddit was that uh if you started to charge rent or your mortgage through this stuff, you're automatically getting charged the 3% transaction fee. That's not the case. What they said is you could still run that rent or that
mortgage through built. You just won't get the points unless you have spend on the built card earning built cash to then convert that built cash into actual here, but so before basically if your rent was $3,000, you would earn 1x bill
point per dollar on that. So 3,000 points per month uh with no transaction fees, no questions asked as long as you made five transactions in a statement period. That's gone now under the old built program. So the new built program
works like this. If your rent was $3,000, there's no fees paid upfront by you on that rent. However, if you want to earn up up to 3,000 points, essentially up to 1x back, you'll see that wording on Built's website, up to
1x on your rent and mortgage. You have to put spend on one of those three built cards to earn built cash to unlock up to 1x points on that. So, here's how it works. $3,000 of rent spend, zero fees. Let's say you then put $1,500 of non-ren
the top Palladium card because that's what you're going to see myself and a lot of other people getting. uh because we want a good 2x catchall card that transfers to Hyatt and transfers to Alaska because built points by far. Now,
that's really arguable. You ask anybody, built points are the most valuable. not changed. Their transfer partners have not changed. So, that's good. Um so, $1,500 of non-ren spend earning 2x points on the Platium card. That's going
to be 3,000 built points. At the same time, you're going to get 4% built cash. So, if you do 4% times $1,500 of spend, that's $60 in built cash per month. could be different, but as a 2x catchall card, uh I think that's pretty a pretty
good estimation for what someone could spend on non-ren spend. Um again, you're going to unlock points on your rent or mortgage here. So, uh the ratio is that $30 in built cash is equal to 1,000 points. Now, that ratio scales up and
incremental. So, it's like you you don't just get like every $30 is 1,000 points. If you only have $15 of built cash, that would convert into 500 points. Or if you have $45 of built cash, that would
have $45 of built cash, that would convert into 1,500 points. But so $30 of built cash is equal to 1,000 points. That's the ratio to keep in mind. Um because we earned $60 of built cash here, that is going to get us 2,000
here, that is going to get us 2,000 points. So, uh $1,500 of non-ren spend. Again, that earned us 3,000 points initially at that 2x uh earning rate. [snorts] Uh plus, we're unlocking 2,000 points on our rent. Uh because we can
have up to 3,000 points on rents, we're unlocking 2,000 points, not the full 3,000, but 2,000 points on that by taking our built cash and converting it into that 2,000 points. So now from this $1,500 of non- rent spend, you get 3,000
points earned plus 2,000 points unlocked. That's 5,000 points in total. this is where I said earlier in the video to disregard earning points on of that as a whole separate thing. Now, if we just pretend like, okay, that's
gone. We're not earning points on rent or mortgage. We're unlocking extra points based on our non-ren spend. So now 5,000 points earned in total for only $1,500 of non-ren spend. That works out to be 3.33 points per dollar. And
that math holds true no matter what your non-ren spend ends up being. So you're not penalized by not spend essentially everybody's everybody was worried online everybody's everybody was worried online that you know you have to spend 75% of
your rent or your mortgage expense on non-ren spend in order to offset the fees the transaction fees. That's not the case. If you come up short like this and you don't have enough built cash to uh essentially, you know, pay off all
the fees that would be associated with this rent payment, you'll unlock uh 2,000 points here, but any excess rent will just be a normal uh bank transfer. Like you're not going to get charged the transaction fee on that. So, um there's
Again, you're not earning the same 1x point on all rent and all mortgage your non-ren spend. So again, my initial impressions here are just that I think the old way of earning points on your rent with Built is gone. That's in the
anybody out there. You can easily recommend a no annual fee card that lets you unlock earning points on your largest expense and those points are very valuable. But now in this new Built 2.0 program, those points are still just
as valuable. But the mechanism for earning those points is what gets complicated here. And I think that is again going to be a big hurdle for Built still in a period here where essentially we're transitioning over from built 1.0
to build 2.0. And so, the card itself actually becomes active on February 7th. 30th, you can make your selections and get the new card shipped out to you, or you can cancel your account. Um, you can also choose what you want to do with
want to keep that as a Wells Fargo autograph card, or just close that time here we're going to see uh more and more just how Built delivers uh this mechanism news to people inside the app. like how are they going to explain for
the average person uh how earning points on your mortgage or rent now works there's a points currency a cashback currency and that's cool that cash back that's something that people aren't talking that much about that could have
some dollar fordoll dollar fordoll value outside of exchanging that that built cash for unlocking points on your rent or mortgage again I said before you could use that built cash potentially for other things so I think that's going
to be another factor that we have to um kind of at work here. Is Built going redeeming that built cash if we want to just ignore earning uh points on a rent or mortgage? And so to summarize here again, the program went from being a
no-brainer program to a brainer program. That's not a bad thing for certain I'm actually going to get a lot of value out of the Palladium card being my new catch-all card. But essentially what made built built and what got everybody
excited about the stuff, earning points on rent with no transaction fees, no catches, no complications, anything like that, that's no longer here. And so we everything in the credit card world. I've made videos about this before. Uh I
fatigue with all these updates and the complexity of things that people just want simplicity over anything else. And so obviously we've had a lot of changes in the credit card world over the past 12 months. We've seen uh Capital 1
Venture X lose its guest policies on lounge access. That's kind of like a minor small little change there. Then we've seen the MX Platinum maybe have a expected. Some people were upset, some people not so much. Chase Sapphire
Reserve had a bunch of changes. That was a dramatic reimagining of that card and And now with this new built 2.0 program, upset is just because it went from one thing to something completely different.
Now, it's very focused on your non-ren spend. Whereas before, people were, you just put four bananas and their rent on that credit card to qualify for earning points on their rent. You can't do that anymore. That that freebie is is kind of
trying to show you both sides here, both the good and the bad. There's some going to see how that plays out over time. We're going to see if Built adjusts anything over time. So, I know they're actively looking at what people
are saying on Reddit and saying on YouTube and social media. So, if there down below. Comment on my videos, other videos, comment on Instagram, on on through all this stuff and so the feedback is very much appreciated and it
communication to build. So, I do appreciate that. I do appreciate them inviting creators out so we can share what our audiences are saying with them. down below what you think of these changes. Are you going to be getting rid
over to one of those three cards with the blue, obsidian, or palladium card? And overall, do you see this as a net positive or a net negative thing? I'm because there's a lot of stuff going on. Like I said, just my initial thoughts
from both sides. That's what I always try to do here on this channel. So, make sure to subscribe down below to see my full detailed review video of these new much for watching and I'll see you in the next