The news: Bilt launched three tiered credit cards with an overhauled rewards scheme for rent and mortgage payments, per a press release.

• All cards will hold a one-year 10% introductory APR, mirroring President Trump’s recent proposed rate caps.
• The entire portfolio will receive 4% back in Bilt Cash for everyday spend.
• And consumers can still opt in to credit reporting on their rent payments.

Like Bilt’s original card, the Blue card has no annual fee. But the Obsidian and Palladium cards cost $95 and $495 a year, respectively. 

A convoluted rewards structure: New York Times reporters called this refresh’s update the “most complicated rewards system we’ve seen.” 

• Bilt cardholders get rewarded in both Bilt Cash and points, with premium tiers earning a different compilation of points based on different categories. 
• For every 25,000 points earned, all cardholders additionally receive $50 in Bilt Cash. 
• Bilt Cash is redeemable within Bilt’s rewards ecosystem, with a one-to-one ratio with Lyft credits or at a participating Bilt merchant.

However, most cardholders are likely to use Bilt Cash to make their rent or mortgage payments more rewards-rich. If Bilt cardholders spend at least 75% of the value of their rent/mortgage payment on other transactions, they can use their Bilt Cash to waive transaction fees on those payments. 

Why the change? One of the biggest reasons Bilt’s first card cost Wells Fargo $10 million a month was that no one used the card for anything outside of rent payments—plus five coffees or metro fares to qualify for the waived transaction fees. 

Bilt is trying to fix that by making it harder to earn the fee-free rent payments—while still making it feel like consumers are getting perks through both Bilt cash and Bilt points. In effect, it’s trying to force its card into top-of-wallet status to improve the cards’ unit economics. 

Implications for lenders: Bilt is making a relatively risky bet that the windfall of rent and mortgage rewards is desirable enough to make cardholders overlook the number of hoops they have to jump through to earn them. 

In an aggressive push to shift users’ perception of Bilt from a housing card to an everyday spend card, it may lose card loyalty outright. Issuers’ strategies for boosting spend need to feel more rewarding than coercive when executing changes to their portfolios.