Bilt Debuts Cards With 10% Cap As Trump Seeks Lower Rates
Bilt has debuted three credit cards letting homeowners earn points on their mortgage payments.
The new cards, announced Wednesday (Jan. 14), have interest rates capped at 10% for 12 months, and arrive days after President Donald Trump called on card issuers to limit rates at that percentage for one year.
“Since launching, Bilt has proven rent should be rewarding. Today, that promise extends to mortgage payments,” the company said in a news release.
The company says the cards — powered in partnership with Cardless, Fidem Financial and Column N.A. — offer rewards on things like rent and mortgage payments for members, open to 5.5 million homes with benefits at tens of thousands of locations.
“This is a win for renters. This is a win for homeowners. This is a win for Americans,” Bilt founder and CEO Ankur Jain, said in the release. “Bilt Card 2.0 offers rewards on your rent, rewards on your mortgage and earns you the most valuable points in the market. We’re not just launching three new cards, we’re rewarding the way people actually live.”
The release does not mention Trump’s recent call for lower rates, and Jain didn’t directly touch on the issue when interviewed by Bloomberg News Wednesday.
“There is clearly a need for affordability at this point in time more than ever,” he said. “It felt like we should be the brand to do this.”
Trump last week called on credit card issuers to impose a one-year, 10% cap on interest rates and has said companies who declined to do so would be breaking the law.
The issue has received significant pushback from the banking sector, with groups like the American Bankers Association saying it would drive consumers to seek out riskier and more expensive sources of credit.
“Our belief is that actions like this will have the exact opposite consequence to what the administration wants for consumers,” Jeremy Barnum, chief financial officer at JPMorgan, said on a recent earnings call.
“Instead of lowering the price of credit, we’ll simply reduce the supply of credit, and that will be bad for everyone: consumers, the wider economy, and yes, at the margin, for us.”
The Bloomberg report quotes a note from KBW analyst Sanjay Sakhrani, who was skeptical about Bilt’s card offerings.
“While this is a headline negative for the industry, as it may be used by the administration to demonstrate the feasibility of a 10% cap, we view this as more of a promotional/marketing ploy from Bilt, given that rate only applies to new purchases on new accounts,” Sakhrani wrote.
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