I think it's pretty good no AF, no FTF card with wide variety of categories.

Wow, I'm excited, they gonna give us 3x on dining or grocery for $495! That's what many no AF cards give you right now, or even 5x in case of CCC.

Ah neat, thanks! Also a timely reminder for me to check my Flying Blue expiration :)

Yeah - this email felt totally pointless. Like, we're making changes, you know they're going to be somewhat negative, we don't want to tell you the details just yet.

Why do they keep bringing this all up?

This was me. I've been digging around... I did find this, which seems to imply a 0% balance transfer from the old Wells card and no transfer fee, for 12 months:

And LifeMiles!

Per Doctor of Credit, looks like the devaluation is not just going to be nerfed a little... but entirely nuked. Not shocking, but still sucks if true.

Just read it. TL;DR for everyone else is effectively you're cashing out the 4% Bilt cash multiplier to offset the CC fees on rent/mortgage, which you'll then get points on at 1x?

I don't know who this benefits (except of course the folks at the top). Absolutely wild.

Wow. If true and you have to off-set the CC fees with non-rent spend that just nukes the program. I might as well pay rent with any non-Bilt card to begin with then.

Card is useless now if you have a large rent/mortgage payment, the base point program itself is decent with good transfer partners but the 495 card really needs bonus categories beyond just the 2x for all.

I'm leaning towards dropping the card as I don't need another points program that doesn't have outsize SUB and spend categories.

At first glance I thought the new cards were pretty terrible. Then I thought that if the 2x catch-all on the Palladium card works for tax payments, it might make sense for me and others depending on the amount of taxes you pay online. If Bilt Cash can be used to redeem for the other neighbood things they have (Lyft, certain restaurants, fitness, their travel portal, etc) in addition to rent/mortgage, getting 2x Bilt points + 4% cash (which I would use for Lyft and neighborhood restaurants, not rent/mortgage) is actually a really good deal. If I pay $30k a year in fed taxes online, that's $1200 of Bilt Cash + 60k points for the cost of a $525 transaction fee and $495 annual fee.

I'd continue to use the Atmos Summit card for my rent. This change greatly decreases the opportunity cost of using the Atmos Summit to pay rent over Bilt.

Such a disappointment... I'd rather open couple more cards with a normal sign-up bonus and spending categories. If cards requires you to make an effort (and it looks worse than coupon book now), than it's a bad credit card.

Similar to what Clemson was saying, I think the $495 card is probably the best deal for people who actually don't want to use a bunch of different cards and just want to get 2x transferrable points on everything (and a good currency.. arguably one of the best right now). Putting all spend on this will get most people enough everyday spending to get the Bilt Cash to offset the rent/mortgage fee, and if you can leverage some or all of the credits to offset most of the AF, then it's not -awful-.

The big thing is the opportunity cost of that card having no bonus spending categories. So it's like the Venture X in that respect - you get 2x on everything, but no bonuses. With Chase nerfing transit and all travel, a lot of my CSR spending went over to Venture X anyways. This might be a good alternative since the points are more valuable the C1.

The other cards aren't nearly as compelling for me personally, though the $95 card could be good for those with a lot of grocery spending.

All in all, definite nerf which most of us saw coming, just maybe not in this way.

I'm currently paying rent via Zelle. Since it isn't part of Bilt's network I have to screenshot this transaction and email to Bilt for points. It's been pretty seamless thus far.

I wonder if they will get rid of this benefit.

Hmm...actually it might warrant thinking about this as a cashback card that applies mostly to travel - ignore the rent/mortgage part entirely. Under the assumption that the 4% bilt cashbucks is able to be used on their travel portal or whatever else they cook up (lyft + walgreens + their fitness network + anything new?). And you still get your 1x/2x/whatever transferable bilt points too.

Like if you compare to the OneKey card that gets you Expedia bucks, this would appear flatly superior by quite a bit.

Guess it depends on how reasonably their OTA portal prices at + the exact specifications of bilt cash.

EDIT:
Basically this.