Buckle up, because Bilt continues to release details about its 2.0 program — which, as you may know, includes three new credit cards, two earning options and now an entirely new second rewards currency: Bilt Cash.
Bilt Cash does not replace Bilt Rewards Points, which are generally regarded as the most valuable type of loyalty program currency (per TPG’s January 2026 valuations), largely due to their high-quality transfer partners. Instead, Bilt Cash can be earned alongside points and will unlock various credits, temporary status upgrades, the ability to earn more points on spending and other special goodies within the Bilt ecosystem.
This additional currency is also part of the trio of credit card welcome bonuses and can be earned at a 4% rate on nonhousing spend if you select that earning option.
But one of the lingering bigger questions from the Bilt 2.0 launch: What exactly does Bilt Cash do?
Now we know what it will do beginning Feb. 1.
So, the short-ish answer: Bilt Cash can be cashed in for Blade helicopter rides, unlock better Rent Day transfer bonus tiers and be spent as credits with Bilt’s partners such as Lyft and GrubHub, among others. There are monthly and annual caps for most of the partners and options.
There’s a pretty exciting option that can increase the earning rates of both the Bilt Obsidian Card (see rates and fees) and the Bilt Palladium Card (see rates and fees) by a full point per dollar spent, which means that the Palladium can virtually earn you 3 points per dollar spent on purchases made using the card.
As a refresher, here are the welcome bonuses for the Bilt cards.
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And a quick reminder that with the Bilt 2.0 cards, outside of the welcome bonus Bilt Cash, you have to make a choice (that you can change monthly) on whether you will earn 4% in Bilt Cash on all everyday purchases (along with Bilt points), or to forgo earning Bilt Cash on your everyday purchases and instead count your everyday card spending toward spending tiers that unlock earning a set percentage of points on your rent or mortgage payments (up to 1.25 points).

Before we dive into the Bilt Cash options we are most excited about based on the just-released list, here’s the full list of ways that Bilt has announced that you will be able to spend your Bilt Cash. This list is very likely to evolve as time goes on, but it should give you a flavor for what is available at launch.
Cardholder exclusive bonuses are available when card earning is set to 4% back in Bilt Cash on everyday spend.
This is all new and very likely to evolve, but here are the Bilt Cash options that caught our eye right off the bat.
This is The Points Guy after all, so the first option that caught our eyes is the ability to cash in $200 in Bilt Cash to earn an additional 1 point per dollar on all of your nonhousing spending (up to $5,000) on both the Bilt Obsidian Card and the Bilt Palladium Card, up to five times year year.
Therefore, with the Obsidian Card, you could earn:
On the Bilt Palladium Card, you could earn 3 points per dollar spent on everyday purchases.
With the additional bonus on the Palladium card, that is an incredible return of 6.6 cents per dollar on everyday spending, per TPG’s January 2026 valuations. Assuming you often maximize your Bilt Rewards with high-value transfer partners such as World of Hyatt and Atmos Rewards, or via Bilt’s periodic Rent Day transfer bonuses, that’s an option absolutely worth considering for those who plan to put everyday spending on this card.

What makes this especially interesting is that you can do it up to five times per year. Once you reach the $5,000 spending cap, you can unlock the additional point bonus again up to that annual cap by cashing in another $200 in Bilt Cash, which you’d earn after spending $5,000 at the 4% Bilt Cash earning rate. Rinse and repeat a few times, as they say.
For those who are in a position to earn a lot of Bilt Cash, Blade looks like a good way to put that cash to use doing something you may not always otherwise get to do.
For those not familiar, Blade is the helicopter service that can take you to/from Manhattan to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) in a matter of minutes.
Most Blade flights currently start at $270 per seat, according to my searches (though Blade advertises a starting price of $195), so using up to $350 in Bilt Cash a max of twice per year should be enough to cover most Blade flights to those NYC-area airports.

This Bilt Cash option has the potential to be very interesting — though exactly how interesting will depend on the details of each transfer bonus and the amount of Bilt Cash required to unlock the next status tier of ratios.
But let’s say you have Bilt Gold status by virtue of holding the Bilt Palladium Card. With this Bilt Cash redemption option, you will be able to use a yet-to-be-announced amount of Bilt Cash to unlock the next transfer bonus ratio normally reserved for the Platinum tier of Bilt members.
Thinking of the December 2025 Rent Day transfer bonus to Avios, that would have theoretically meant that instead of getting a 75% bonus as a Bilt Gold member, you could have used Bilt Cash to buy up to the 100% transfer bonus tier normally reserved for Bilt Platinum members.
If you were transferring 100,000 Bilt points (at a 100% bonus) by temporarily unlocking the Platinum tier that was available in that month, you would receive 25,000 more Avios than you would have at the Gold tier with its 75% bonus. Assuming the price stays in the $75 Bilt Cash range that was announced today, that’s a potentially great value.
Related: Best ways to redeem British Airways Avios: From flights to Hawaii to island hopping in the Caribbean
Last but absolutely not least, the option to use Bilt Cash to unlock earning points on rent or mortgage payments is absolutely high on our interest list.
You can earn 1 point per dollar spent on rent or mortgage payments for every $1,000 of payments made with $30 in Bilt Cash. So, if your monthly housing payment is $2,500 and you want to earn 1 point per dollar, it would take $75 in Bilt Cash to make those 2,500 Bilt points a reality. Of course, you can opt to use less Bilt Cash to earn points on a smaller percentage of your housing payment.
Mathematically, this is actually an even more rewarding option than the ability to redeem $200 in Bilt Cash to earn an extra point per dollar on $5,000 in spending on the Obsidian or Palladium Cards. At a rate of $30 in Bilt Cash per 1 point per dollar spent on $1,000 in housing payments, you’d actually be able to earn 1 point per dollar on up to $6,666 of housing payments with $200 in Bilt Cash, rather than the $5,000 of 1 bonus point per dollar on everyday spending on the cards, if you wanted to look at it that way.
Of course, this isn’t necessarily an either / or situation, so perhaps the right way to look at it all, assuming you earn enough Bilt Cash, is “why not both?”
Much like a gigantic multi-page Cheesecake Factory menu, the Bilt 2.0 rollout has been a lot to take in all at once.
The upside is that you have many choices, including how you earn and use Bilt Cash. But that breadth of choice can also admittedly make it feel a little overwhelming at first, especially right now, as none of this is live for use quite yet.
But potentially earning 3 points per dollar spent on the Palladium Card (unlocked when redeeming $200 in Bilt Cash, capped at $5,000, five times per year) is a very solid option. And of course, using Bilt Cash to unlock earning fee-free points on your rent or mortgage payment is not only core to the Bilt program, but an excellent use of Bilt Cash.
We’ll certainly update more as Bilt Cash goes live and likely evolves.
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