Bilt Complicates Paying Rent Out Of Network

Bilt has sent out an e-mail to members stating the way you pay for rent (if paying out of network) will change. Statement on reddit as follows:

Hey everyone,

Members who live outside of our network and pay rent with a Rent Rewards account (the routing and checking account number) will receive an email today announcing an update to how you pay rent thanks to our revamped BillPay by Bilt system.

This has no effect on the points you earn, their value or how you redeem points.

As we’ve scaled (now 1 in 4 apartment buildings nationwide) we needed a more seamless and secure payment process while building the foundation for new features – including our mortgage rewards program launching this year, and other future bill types.

Going forward, here’s how you’ll pay rent:

    1. Pre-authorize your payment in the Bilt app – this will include selecting your rent amount and how you want to pay rent (Bilt Mastercard for waived fees, other cards for earning both Bilt Points and your card’s rewards like the 3X Alaska miles when using an Alaska card)NOTE: You’ll receive new BillPay by Bilt routing and account numbers the first time you do this and will need to update it in your property’s payment portal – you’ll only need to do this the first time and it needs to be done by April 29th
    2. Submit your rent payment as usual through your property’s payment portal. Make sure to submit your payment within 5 days of authorizing it in the Bilt app

If you live in a building in the Bilt network or pay rent by check, there is no change to how you pay rent today.

No, the BillPay by Bilt routing and account numbers won’t work on anything besides rent/HOA….yet. This is pretty exciting stuff as we scale, and unreal to think of compared to where we started four years ago.

As always, appreciate the reddit community being our biggest fans and source of feedback. Our focus has been on setting up this BillPay infrastructure, but look for several more notes in rapid succession on the many things coming in 2025, including our card 2.0. – Kerr, Bilt 

Update with FAQ:

    1. This does not affect BiltProtect.
    2. The auto-authorize feature will be live next week. If you want to use this, you can instead of authorizing each month.
    3. You don’t need to authorize the exact amount of rent including utilities. If you authorize within a reasonable amount (a few hundred dollars) you payment will be fine.
    4. BillPay is designed for many more uses to earn rewards on other than rent and mortgage.
    5. You only need to update the account and routing numbers once on the first time you pay rent.
    6. You can still pay rent by Venmo.

I suspect Bilt has seen some people abusing this which is why the changes are being made, but it does complicate the process for a lot of people. Bilt users are understandably unhappy regarding these changes.

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23 Comments
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Jay
Jay (@guest_2025381)
March 18, 2025 11:49

My apartment always adds a separate $2.95 processing fee in addition to the rent payment which hasn’t been a problem so far. The payment goes through fine. I wonder how that’s going to be handled, if the pre-authorized amount only includes rent, will the $2.95 fee become a problem? Feels like it’s not worth the hassle.
Also all this talk about Bilt not making money, did WF consider all the checking accounts people opened because they had bilt, I fee like with my direct deposits that I now have with WF, they might not be losing money in my case. I know not everyone would have opened a WF account but just something to consider

TheBlindLife
TheBlindLife (@guest_2025265)
March 18, 2025 09:45

This process is not intuitive or user friendly. It’s a real PITA!!
It looks like they’re doing everything possible to kill this card.

Jones
Jones (@guest_2025116)
March 18, 2025 02:03
  1. Select date and amount for Pre-Authorization
  2. Enable ‘Auto-Authorize’
  3. Update new routing and account #’s in rent portal

Am I missing anything?

Frito Pendejo
Frito Pendejo (@guest_2024999)
March 17, 2025 22:45

Man, remember roomipay? $5k check to yourself with no paperwork. We need more doomed fintech startups

NM
NM (@guest_2024910)
March 17, 2025 20:58

Not seeing anywhere in the app or website to pre-authorize? Is anyone else having this issue?

John
John (@guest_2024920)
March 17, 2025 21:07
  NM

Some have said that it’s supposed to go live next week. We’ll see.

avsterbone
avsterbone (@guest_2024833)
March 17, 2025 19:17

The fact Bilt managed to grow to processing the payments of 25% of the rental market so quickly is incredibly impressive. They gotta be a billion dollar company at this point.

Komma
Komma (@guest_2024866)
March 17, 2025 20:06

I think Yardi has a pretty large share of the market as well. Most portals had pretty outdated stuff, so I imagine it wasn’t overly difficult to sell to most of these large property management companies and get them switch.

a
a (@guest_2024872)
March 17, 2025 20:16

I have a suspicion they’re talking about acceptance rather than actually taking over processing. And with as many buildings is used the same couple of rent portals, it’s also not surprising either

John
John (@guest_2024881)
March 17, 2025 20:19

Fellas, we may not agree on here much, but I just hope that you’re right, and that BILT continues to grow and still exist into the future, because I like earning my 1% on rent, then redeeming it for Hyatt. If they can keep that going, I’m a happy camper, regardless of the CFPB dying on our watch. RIP.

Kevin
Kevin (@guest_2025007)
March 17, 2025 22:57

And lose a ton of money while processing a lot of payments. Heading from a unicorn to a bankruptcy and dustbins of history.

Rick
Rick (@guest_2025024)
March 17, 2025 23:29

There’s exactly zero chance they have 25% of the rental market. 25% of large landlords maybe but many rentals are mom and pop operations.

Budugu
Budugu (@guest_2024825)
March 17, 2025 19:10

Still dont understand how is it different than current process other than them re issuing account nos… it pretty close to not being worth the effort.

John
John (@guest_2024924)
March 17, 2025 21:09

Well, since they’re forcing it anyway, we’d better ‘do our part’ or we’re going to fail to pay rent or miss out on our points. And the CFPB is dead (not my preference), so please do be vigilant! …no one is coming to save us, these days.

A-rom
A-rom (@guest_2025443)
March 18, 2025 12:59

I was also thinking the same. This doesn’t seem different than the current process for me. I haven’t started using Bilt till now. Do we have to authorize the payment every month?

John
John (@guest_2024817)
March 17, 2025 18:55

Thank you, William, for better explaining this than BILT themselves. Sheesh.

John
John (@guest_2024850)
March 17, 2025 19:40

Ah, ok, well, seeing it at DoC automatically gave it more credibility. I donno, for some reason, when I saw the email from BILT, I just didn’t ‘trust’ it as much. Thanks either way, good sir.

Charles
Charles (@guest_2024867)
March 17, 2025 20:09

To be fair, the Reddit thread (which William copied here) explained it MUCH better than the email Bilt sent to customers. They left out some very important details, namely the auto-authorize feature and that payment amounts can be off by “a few hundred dollars”, until the Reddit FAQ update.

John
John (@guest_2024875)
March 17, 2025 20:17

That auto-authorize feature (after the first setup under the new method) is key to this not being that big of a deal–without it, this blows. With it, NBD. Still, we gotta implement properly. Hope folks pay proper attention and do this right, otherwise, they’ll miss rent and their points, most likely.

Also, that it can be ‘off by a few hundred dollars’ is huge because many of us have utilities added onto base rent. Hope Ankur and the team pull this off…

progapanda
progapanda (@guest_2025025)
March 17, 2025 23:29

Yeah I fully intend to exit the Bilt ecosystem if the auto-authorize feature isn’t what it sounds like.

Art Vandelay
Art Vandelay (@guest_2024814)
March 17, 2025 18:55

How do I pre-authorize if my rent changes based on water usage?

KiloCharlie
KiloCharlie (@guest_2024861)
March 17, 2025 19:53

According to bilt themselves, your pre-auth is given for that set amount + around 10%. You can always pre-auth more, its just to protect “fraud” transactions that drains the account