Went through this apparently common fraud issue with WF and Bilt today and the Bilt CS explicitly said the ACH information did not need to be updated as they issued a new card number. I would just watch that you get credit for the 5+ transactions made on your old card number since it sounded like the new card number may not "see" those transactions and give you points credit for rent payments made on the re-issued account.

Fraud on replacement card not received!
 

I was supposed to receive my card within 5-7 business days but had not yet received it when I received a 'thank you for confirming your card' email from WF. I called in & reported the stolen new card & was told that they could see that someone had tried to use it for a $6.38 charge. This new card is cancelled & they are overnighting a new card!

The attack being used is a BIN attack, according to a BILT representative on Reddit. So it's possible for them to guess numbers of cards that are in transit.

Interesting! I later got a fraud alert for an attempted $500 charge at an actual location which was denied.

I'll never be able to rebuild Freedom Flex/Ink Cash/CSP/Unlimited because I keep getting attracted by more than 5 shiny things every 24 months, so I thought this might be a good alternative.

Bad: Fraud on the first day
Good: They next-day-aired the replacement on Saturday
Good: The 5x for 5 days seemed to work on the new card
Bad: The 5x ended after 3.5 days (I've got an inquiry in)
Good: The Bilt site is pretty easy to navigate, see the card number, see rewards earned, add travel rewards partners, ...
Bad: The WF site is very hard to navigate and had lags where other banks are instant (activate cell phone until set up alerts, get a replacement card until see activity on replacement card)
Good: It appeals to the game-player in me . . . what expenses can I shift to be payed on the 1st every month for double points? Can it be automatic or manual? Is it worth a possible $5 in points to play trivia this month?

I guess the fee is $0 so as long as I have the time and patience to call/email about the issues . . . but I can see one or the other of those expiring soon :-) And we may sell the house one day. The rent benefit would be phenomenal then.

Just got my card, another bad is that I can't add the card to Samsung or Google pay without contacting WF. All my other cards use other verification methods but with Bilt it is giving me the general WF 800 number and I'm lost in a phone tree.

I assume this card does not have a chip so would need an app for NFC payments.

It does not have a contactless chip. However, I've been able to add both my original card and the replacement card to Google Pay from within the Bilt mobile app. I did not need to contact Wells Fargo in either instance.

I can't remember what I did- maybe I used the "show number" feature in the app, but I also was able to relatively easily add the card w/o a call to WF.

I tried adding it in the morning. At 4:30p just as my subway train was entering the tunnel I get a call from WF and it went to voicemail. There was a fraud alert placed on the account and it was frozen.
I called later in the day and the freeze was placed because someone added the account to Amazon. Well that someone was myself and the account did add correctly.
More time was spent reviewing the charges to verify there was no fraud on this account and that I had the card.

Now the next day, attempted to add the card again to Google Pay, and same thing. Come up with the button CALL BANK. Which is the general 800 number. They answer and say I have to transfer you to online banking and they will drop when they do the transfer.

Online banking says I need to contact Customer Service and sends me back to the original people. Now this person says I have to call the number on the back of the card which is Bilt Reward. I am out of time to handle this for today.

This is so totally not worth my time and I am so doing it anyway-

I am moving all my monthly donations to organizations to the first and putting them on this card. I get a whopping gain of 2 Hyatt versus 2 cents cash on tens of dollars a month.

I'm not sure of the actual cash value of the card for a non-renter but for just the game playing and the $10,000 (instead of $1000 - are you reading AMEX?) loss-damage insurance it's a winner. Of course, WF may ruin this by being too annoying.

I have been hesitating for months whether I should jump onto Bilt.
No big open bonus, but is the only unique card that has routing & account number for those usages...
the recent wave of fraud is halting me...

Bilt customer service has been very responsive - the earned points is fixed. So, consider that if you are on the fence.

The fraud is definitely something to consider though.

While my mom's ACH info did not change with the new Bilt card number, rent auto payment through apt portal stopped. Not sure why. I had to manually pay for Feb and re-setup autopay.

If it is a BIN attack, how do they find out the right cvv, expiration date and billing address?

They guess the expiration date and authorize the card somewhere that doesn't require cvv or zip.

[Glares at Amazon]

My Bilt card has a chip.

Sorry, I meant a contactless chip, not the EMV chip. I should have been clearer.

Got a (possibly) targeted email for 5x on Amazon through 4/21.

Edit: Cap mentioned. $1,250 spend to get a total of 5k bonus points.

Missed the memo on this card, just signed up today. My innocent brain assumed that there would have to be some sort of verification of the rent/landlord setup, but sure doesn't seem like it.

Which leads to my immediate followup question - how is this not going to get wildly abused for the 50k/yr of "rent"?

Probably going to apply for this card to set and forget rent payments to earn points. Two questions:
1. It seems this works on literally any apartment, regardless of the landlord / rental company. Is that correct? I currently pay rent through a portal (called Resident Portal) that charges a 4% credit card processing fee...this card somehow circumvents that?

2. Can you transfer points to a spouse's UA / Hyatt / whatever account?

Can't speak to your second question, but for Question 1 the way it works is that Bilt will give you an ACH routing number and account number that you'd enter into Resident Portal and allow your landlord to pull rent payments from that account. Bilt will track those payments and give you 1-to-1 credit for any rent payments made via that ACH account. You do not even use the credit card payment functionality offered by the Resident Portal.

Will paying office rent work? A check would have to be sent.

Has the fraud detection on this card been super sensitive for folks lately? I know they had that BIN attack so they're probably trying to look out for people, but it's been pretty annoying having routine transactions declined. I didn't have any fraudulent transactions but they replaced my card anyways. Prior to the replacement, I had numerous transactions declined for potential fraud where they didn't give me the ability to clear the transaction via text or email, forcing me to call in. These were for things like using Lyft and making online purchases.

After they rather unnecessarily replaced my card, I had to update my payment method for a number of online accounts, which resulted in a number of rejected transactions and again required me calling in to get the transactions cleared.

It's making me a bit nervous about bringing it for overseas trips in case it trips the fraud detection and I have to call while traveling internationally, especially since all my cards have removed the travel notice feature. I always bring several cards so as to have a backup but still, pretty annoying.

Yes, it would seem so. I've had a number of small online purchases (<10$) declined, even when they were with a merchant I'd successfully purchased with before. It's a bit annoying, but usually fixed quickly with a call.

I expected this to work, but will confirm it here in case anyone else wants to be 100% sure.

My AA miles were within a month of expiration but transferring 2000 Bilt points reset the two-year clock. I'm sure 1000 would work as well but I'm not Bilt silver yet.

Man - these guys are really chintzy with the rounding. Seems like just for goodwill they round like everyone else, but no, they just cut off everything to the right of the decimal (this is, at least, after any multiples are applied - so that's something).

You can have a check sent if your landlord isn't set up with direct deposit etc.

besides bilt, there are many ways to keep AA miles active: eshopping, uber, ubereats, shell, etc.

90 days of Hyatt Explorist (10 nights during that time to keep it for a year, 20 for Globalist for a year). This could be very valuable for some. Because of my travel schedule I'll get a bottle of water and some more bonus points, which is, I guess, not nothing.

What's the timing on transfers? I just transferred to AA--will it actually take 48 hours?

Mine did not take that long but it was several hours. I'd probably not do it to get an award unless I didn't mind if the points were there anyway.

For UA it was almost instantaneous

It ended up posting this morning, ~24 hours later. Got the email notification another 6-8 hours after that.

I've had some Hyatt transfers complete almost immediately and some take about 48 hours.

Uh oh. That's how I mostly use to use the points. Thanks for the anecdote/warning.

Good thing is that hotel award inventory isn’t generally as fickle as airline award inventory

Just coming on here to rant about customer service at BILT. I've had multiple issues just in the first week, and it seems impossible to get people to actually correspond with you on the BILT (vs Wells Fargo) side if you have issues with rent or incorrect rewards. I've had them reach out to me after a first ticket, but when I respond I never hear back.

It's not worth 50k points per year IMO. I might even close my account once my points clear this month. (Of course once it's all working properly then maybe it's worth keeping but IDK... customer service matters when there are issues.)

Sorry if this has been answered before ... I rent a condo unit directly from the owners and currently pay them using my bank's bill pay portal, which allows me to input their routing & account number and transfer money directly into their account. I see that the Bilt card can give you the account & routing numbers for your account so your landlord can pull from them, but is there an option to "push" a payment to a routing & account number? I'm not seeing that there is in the FAQs but wanted to be sure.

For the 5x first 5 day bonus, would making a rent payment through ACH count for that, or would it have to strictly be a charge to the credit card?

Has to be a charge to the credit card.