Yes — Bilt does cover the credit card fee on rent and mortgage payments. All three Bilt cards let you pay housing costs through the Bilt platform with no transaction fee to you, while services like Plastiq and PlacePay charge roughly 2.99% for the same thing. Bilt pulls off the waiver by routing the money from a linked bank account instead of running it as a credit card charge, so your landlord or mortgage servicer never processes a card swipe and there’s no interchange fee to pass back.
How the Fee-Free Payment Works
Most landlords and property managers either don’t accept credit cards at all or add a 2.5% to 3% surcharge when they do. On a $2,000 rent payment, a 2.99% fee is about $60 a month, which is enough to wipe out any rewards a card earns on the transaction.
Bilt sidesteps that math entirely. When you make a housing payment through the Bilt app or website, the funds come out of a linked bank account. What the landlord or mortgage servicer receives looks like a normal ACH transfer, a mailed check, or a Venmo or PayPal payment. Because no one on the receiving end is processing a credit card, there’s no merchant discount rate for anyone to pass along.
How the payment reaches your landlord depends on where you live. If you’re in a Bilt Alliance property (Bilt’s network of partnered buildings, which the company says covers about one in four apartment buildings nationwide), rent is processed directly through the app with built-in integration into the building’s management system. Everyone else uses Bilt’s “BillPay” feature, which generates a unique routing and account number you plug into your landlord’s payment portal so the transaction runs like a standard bank transfer. Bilt also supports payment by mailed check, Venmo, and PayPal.
A related upside: because housing payments are pulled from your bank account rather than charged against your credit line, they don’t count toward your credit utilization ratio.
What Counts as a Housing Payment
Eligible payments through Bilt include residential rent, mortgage payments, HOA dues, utilities, property taxes, amenity fees, and gym fees billed by a property manager or mortgage servicer. You can pay housing costs on more than one property through the platform, and there is no annual cap on points earned from housing payments.
When the Fee Waiver Does Not Apply
The waiver is specific to paying with a Bilt card. If you use the Bilt platform with a different payment method, separate fees apply:
- Bank account (ACH) outside the Bilt Alliance: $1.95 processing fee.
- Visa or Mastercard debit card: $9.95 flat fee.
- Discover or American Express debit card: 3% processing fee, minimum $3.00.
- Non-Bilt domestic credit card: 3% processing fee, minimum $3.00, and only available in states where credit card surcharges are permitted.
- International credit or debit card: 4% processing fee, minimum $3.00.
The state restriction on non-Bilt credit cards reflects surcharge laws that vary by jurisdiction. Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Puerto Rico maintain outright bans on credit card surcharges. Florida, Oklahoma, and Texas have surcharge prohibitions on the books that federal courts have largely rendered unenforceable. Where surcharges are banned, the non-Bilt credit card option may not appear on the platform.
Rewards on Rent Are Separate From the Fee Waiver
The zero transaction fee is unconditional. Earning meaningful rewards on the same payment is not. When you set up your account you pick between two rewards structures, and both tie housing points to how much you use the card elsewhere.
Under the housing-only option, points on rent or mortgage scale with your non-housing spending during the same billing cycle. Spend at least 25% of your monthly housing payment on other purchases and you earn 0.5x points on housing; 50% takes it to 0.75x; 75% takes it to 1x; and 100% or more unlocks the maximum 1.25x rate. Cardholders who don’t hit any threshold still get a flat 250 points per month on housing.
Under the flexible Bilt Cash option, all three cards earn 4% back in Bilt Cash on non-housing purchases. You can then redeem that Bilt Cash to unlock points on housing at $30 in Bilt Cash per 1,000 Bilt Points, capped at 1x on the housing payment. For a $2,000 rent payment, unlocking the full 2,000 points takes $60 in Bilt Cash, which comes from $1,500 in non-rent spending at the 4% rate. Bilt Cash also redeems dollar-for-dollar for hotel bookings, Lyft rides, and other options, so it isn’t stuck being used for housing rewards.
The practical upshot: putting rent on the card and nothing else costs nothing in fees, but it also earns very little in points. Rewards on housing require regular use of the card for everyday spending.
Requirements Worth Knowing Before You Sign Up
Housing payments through Bilt run under a system called BiltProtect, which is mandatory on the new cards and requires the payment to be funded from your linked bank account within 24 hours. You need the money available at the time of payment. This is not a “charge it now, pay the bill later” arrangement in the traditional credit card sense, even though the transaction earns points as if it were card spending.
The previous rule requiring at least five non-rent transactions per billing cycle to earn rewards has been eliminated under the current program. Approval for a Bilt card typically requires a FICO score of 670 or higher, and opening a new account creates a separate credit line on your credit report.
How This Compares to Paying Rent Through Other Services
The two most commonly cited alternatives for paying rent by credit card are Plastiq and PlacePay (formerly RentShare). Both charge 2.99% on credit and debit card payments, and PlacePay also charges $1.95 for ACH transfers. Neither requires your landlord to sign up: Plastiq mails a check or sends an electronic payment, and PlacePay processes direct deposits.
For ongoing rent, the math on those services is unfavorable. A card earning 1.5% to 2% cash back generates less value than a 2.99% fee costs, so every payment is a small net loss. The scenario where paying the fee makes sense is one-time: hitting a large sign-up bonus spending requirement on a new card, where the bonus value exceeds the processing cost.
Bilt’s structure is the reason it can waive the fee at all. It isn’t a third-party processor charging your card and paying your landlord; it’s a payment routing system that moves money by ACH, check, or peer-to-peer transfer while separately awarding points to the cardholder. That’s what removes the 2.99% floor other services can’t get below.