Last Updated on March 7, 2024 by CreditFred
So, you’ve earned a bunch of points…but now the real headache is how to use it effectively.
Enter BILT. It’s been just over a year since I signed up for BILT, the first credit card to let you earn points on your rent (and HOA!) with no fees! Although they had a shaky start and the app was pretty buggy, I must say they’ve come a long way and made drastic improvements to the entire experience, along with adding a bunch of perks.
One of the coolest features they recently rolled point is built-in point.me integration (for free!), where you simply enter where you want to go, when, and the search engine will do the hard work for you!
Here’s how it works:
1. Search
In your BILT portal (desktop website or mobile app), click on “Rewards” tab and choose “Travel”. Now select “Transfer partners”, this will search for award availability across BILT’s numerous transfer partners.
2. Compare
BILT will search across various airline loyalty programs and show you the points needed to book. For example, you can see how one business class flight from San Francisco to Taipei could cost up to 250k miles when booked via United MileagePlus, but only costs 80k when via Air France/KLM Flying Blue program.
If you click in, it even shows you WHERE to transfer your points to complete the booking. Additionally, many of these partners overlap with other transfer partners from Chase, Amex, Citi, Capital One etc, so you can even pool points from various banks if you don’t have enough points.
3. Book It!
I tested it out myself, and lo and behold…I was actually able to find this amazing deal in just a couple of minutes! 13 hours in China Airlines Business Class secured!
Btw, this same flight in cash costs over $3400 (one-way)!
This gives the redemption an amazing rate of ~3.8cpp!
($3438 cash fare - $123 award taxes)/88,000pts = ~$0.038
Even better – if you stack it with the upcoming May BILT Rent Day promo of 100% transfer bonus to Air France / KLM Flying Blue program to redeem this China Airlines business class flight, you can essentially book this flight using only 44k BILT points, an astounding 8cpp redemption!
Conclusion
This BILT integration has taken all the guesswork out of how to best redeem those hard-earned points. I’m actually so impressed with this functionality and for this reason alone can whole-heartedly recommend anyone in the points and miles game to sign up!
However, this feature is not perfect, as it only searches BILT airline transfer partners, so redemption options from other airline loyalty programs like ANA Mileage Club, Avianca LifeMiles, etc. will not show up in the results. Additionally, the current search engine only allows searching for specific dates. Hopefully in the future they can implement a +/- 3 day search or even better, an award availabililty calendar for those more flexible with the travel dates.
Check out my full review on the BILT credit card, or apply today using my referral!