BILT has announced a funding round of $250 million at a valuation of $10.75 billion. As part of this they have also announced that they will be ditching Wells Fargo as a card issuing partner and instead partnering with Cardless to launch BILT 2.0. In total three new cards will be launched:
- No annual fee
- $95 annual fee
- $495 annual fee
The new cards will launch in 2026. We don’t know exactly what these cards will look like benefits wise but they did send out a survey. It was rumored that Wells Fargo was losing $10 million a month on the BILT card so this change of card issuer is not a surprise. The partnership with Wells Fargo was due to end in 2029 and according to WSJ it was Wells Fargo that decided to exit the agreement. BILT will also be expanding into mortgages, student housing and Condo & HOA.
This company has a 10 Billion valuation…
Every Blogger is saying Bilt is ditching/booting Wells Fargo…..why? Richard?………Wells is in fact dropping Bilt……………why not be different and tell it like it is………………you are Doctor of Credit, we hold you to a higher standard.
Glad to hear WF is being cut. Shitty bank with a history of misuse of consumer data and losing it as well.
Cardless, of course, is going to provide GDPR-level consumer data protection and high-touch personalized client service to everyone amirite?
You know they were scraping the bottom of the barrel if Cardless was the choice for their new card partnership. How many major players told them GTFOOH.
To be fair, Wells Fargo ditched BILT as they were losing millions a month.
Cardless. Everybody is gonna be cardless when they discontinue ther product like almost all of their products have been.
No I think they will just devalue them to the point that no one use care or use them.
Why so serious?
Or they will devalue first then discontinue like all their other cards
I believe Kenneth Chenault who is steering BILTs ship will morph this into a quasi Amex type card. Its what he knows, its a pathway to a lot of profit. With the annual fee component whatever their losses will start to evaporate. They will probably add some sort of coupon book.
The free card will offer very little in terms of transfer. 95 dollar card will be a sweet spot. The more expensive one will offer TSA/Clear and probably some lounges.
I wonder if the free card will keep the no foreign transaction fee.
BILT has been profitable. Issuers have not been
yes. but dont forget the critical nature of the supporting host bank. amex is like apple. full vertical integration. BILT w/ cardless (first electronic bank) is DOA. but i guarantee the deal was done via extremely favorable terms for BILT to basically build out and maybe even acquire cardless in the future. i can see this happen in the next 10yrs.
We’re also neglecting to mention that BILT said they’d expand into mortgage payments in 2025. This has apparently been delayed til 2026.
I’ve been using BILT to pay mortgage for over a year
My guess is they will follow Chase route. No AF card will earn points but cannot transfer to airlines. I hope not.
That would be hella-lame.
Why the misleading title? Wells Fargo ditched BILT because they were losing too much money.
BILT probably wanted to expand their lineup and bring in new benefits, which was the perfect excuse for WF to leave their contract.