Bilt Rebuilding Around Housing Payments

Bilt is no longer just a card business, but its 2025 revenue still sat on top of a temporary bank subsidy that masked which parts of the model truly stood on their own. The original Wells Fargo card let Bilt pay landlords by ACH or check while Wells absorbed the normal 2% to 3% card acceptance cost and paid Bilt a 0.8% share of rent volume. That helped Bilt scale fast, but Wells exited early after the card underperformed on the non rent spending and revolving balances that were supposed to offset rewards.1 2 3 4

• The landlord side is economically cleaner than the old card side. Once Bilt is embedded in Yardi, RealPage, or MRI, a property manager can turn on rent payments and rewards inside the resident portal, and Bilt earns roughly 0.6% to 0.9% on payment volume plus fees tied to renewal incentives and loyalty programs.1 5
• The Wells era worked because someone else carried the expensive part. Internal research shows Wells paid the processing cost and sent Bilt 0.8% of rent volume, while outside reporting says Wells was losing up to $10M per month because cardholders used the product heavily for rent but less than expected for everyday spend.1 2 4
• That is why the 2026 reset matters. Bilt replaced the single Wells Fargo card with a new Cardless and Column program, added annual fee tiers, and expanded into mortgage payments and home purchase rewards. The business is being rebuilt around housing payments, merchant offers, and software distribution, not just a no fee rent card.3 4 6 7

The next phase is about proving that Bilt can make money from the housing network itself. If payment processing, property software, merchant commissions, and housing adjacent products like mortgage and home purchase rewards keep growing, Bilt becomes less like a promotional card and more like a toll collector across the full renter to homeowner journey.1 3 5 7