What exactly was Bilt Technologies providing? My expectation is they would used AI/BigData/TheForce to identity which renters are likely to be balance carriers. How did they not hold any risk for the leads/users they generated?
So Wells eats the HUGE interchange fee from the rent, and then divides the piddling remaining fees with BILT and pays them $200 for each customers?
The use case, is give landlord this card alone, set for auto pay, and earn “points” but then do all other spending on a higher reward card it seems like? What were the points? Cards are routinely paying 2% cash back…
Bilt "Rewards" is a way for shady Wells Fargo to advertise to, extort fees from, and monetize a captive market of apartment leasees. It's a bunch of annoying, gotcha capitalism bullshit soon-to-be-former leasees like me don't give two shits about.
> way for shady Wells Fargo to advertise to, extort fees from, and monetize a captive market
So standard fare for a rewards program? Not sure how this is any different than what chase, amex, or anyone else does to their rewards members - all of them use (and sell) your purchase and balance history for that stuff.
It isn’t. It’s exactly the same. The only difference is that Bilt provides an ACH account number / routing number for one payment per month: rent. And if you can’t ACH, they’ll mail a check for you.
Maybe that was the plan, but the article makes it sound like the money is flowing the other way: renters can use it to get a bit of money out of Wells Fargo, which is why they lose money on it.
Just because companies are trying to make money doesn’t mean they succeed.
Loss leaders taken too far, sure. They're controlling a lot of float by collecting rent for zillions of apartment complexes and then monetizing relationships with other vendors like Lyft and indirectly through rev sharing with credit card processors used by local merchants like restaurants.
From their app:
Bilt Card $0 annual fee¹, 1x points on rent, 2x travel¹, 3x dining¹, 1x other purchases¹, and no transaction fees for paying rent.
It seems like they're idiots if they're just giving away money when they're a captive platform their users cannot opt-in or -out of, because their payment customers are/should be the mega apartment management companies. It could also be that they over-expanded headcount for the amount of revenue (and lack of profits) they currently have.
What exactly was Bilt Technologies providing? My expectation is they would used AI/BigData/TheForce to identity which renters are likely to be balance carriers. How did they not hold any risk for the leads/users they generated?
So Wells eats the HUGE interchange fee from the rent, and then divides the piddling remaining fees with BILT and pays them $200 for each customers?
The use case, is give landlord this card alone, set for auto pay, and earn “points” but then do all other spending on a higher reward card it seems like? What were the points? Cards are routinely paying 2% cash back…