Bilt 2.0 Cards NOW LIVE + Full Details

Well, the wait is over. The countdown is at zero, and Built has finally released the details of their new Built 2.0 cards to the public. There have been multiple rumors about these cards over the past few weeks, and we finally know the official stats. And actually, you'll be surprised that although it's not 100% like what was leaked through what people found in website code, I'm impressed how quickly you all managed to find three to four of the draft concepts we keep lying around in the code. They are pretty similar to what was leaked out and in this video we're going to go through all of it. Hey credit warriors, welcome to the show. My name is Ben Hedges aka the credit sha and on this channel I cover US credit cards, personal finance and luxury travel. If you like the sound of that do subscribe but let's get into it. And this video is brought to you by Max Rewards but more on that later. Okay, so if you don't know, Built is the massively popular rewards program that lets you pay rent with a credit card and earn points. You can use any credit card for a 3% fee or you can get their credit card and pay rent with no fee and earn built points. Now, Built actually shut down their credit card late last year in preparation for the launch of a trifecta of three new built credit cards that they are calling the Built 2.0 cards. And they have been promising that these cards will be even better and let you pay not just rent but also pay mortgages and earn points as well. Now, the Built program is separate from the credit card. So, if you do want to sign up for Built, you can click the link down below at any point during the video. You can sign up, you can link cards that are currently in your wallet, and if you use those cards to dine at restaurants in the Built dining program, you get three extra points per dollar. Okay? It's kind of a no-brainer. Thank me later, and you'll have a BF account ready if you want to sign up for the credit card at a later date. So, for some time we have known that the new built cards would be actually issued starting February 7th, 2026, but they would be open for applications for new card members or current card members could pick which one of the new cards they wanted to convert over to on January 14th, which is today. And we now have all the information on the new cards. Funny thing is, even though the general manager of Built Travel, Richard Kerr, gave the impression that it wasn't going to be anything like the leaks, it has ended up being pretty similar. So, we do in fact have the blue card. Okay, the naming conventions are exactly the same, right, as the leak. The blue card, the Obsidian card, obviously named after the Obsidian Order from Star Trek Deep Space 9. >> The Obsidian Order, >> right? Obviously, and the Palladium card. Chase recently changed the name of their Palladium card to the JP Morgan reserve card, so Built figured, why not? Now, I want to first say that what has been announced is pretty similar to what was in the leak in terms of how you pay for rent and mortgage, whether you pay a fee or not. Okay? Because remember, the leak seemed to propose that you would pay a fee for mortgages or that's what people were assuming. Then Richard Kerr came out and said that you wouldn't pay a fee. >> As a Built card holder, you will always be able to make your full rent or mortgage payment seamlessly through built and without a transaction fee. So there is something there and there is something called built cash which was leaked out that you're going to see in a moment that you earn on these cards in addition to points and built cash is crucial to how you earn points on paying mortgages and paying rent. Okay, it's something to do with built cash to give you a little bit of a clue. All right, I'll tell you about that a little bit later in the video, but that's just a little bit of a primer. So let's go through the cards now one by one. the Built Blue card. So, on this card, you get a $100 worth of built cash when you sign up for it. Okay, it's kind of a welcome bonus. Not really. There's no spend requirement. Uh you get 4% back in built cash on purchases excluding rent and mortgage. So, that's just your everyday purchases, 4% back on everything. And then in addition to the built cash that you go get on everything, all everyday spend, you get one point per dollar on rent and mortgage. actually you don't earn built cash on that. So one point per dollar rent a mortgage and then one point per dollar on everyday spend in addition to the built cash you earn. Then there are partner benefits which are points multipliers but on built partners. So 3x plus on partner restaurants. Okay, that's the built dining program that we talked about a little while ago. Three points uh plus on partner fitness studios, three points per dollar on lift rides uh once you've linked your built and lift accounts. Two points per dollar at Walgreens. So, that's one extra point at Walgreens. There are no annual credits on this card, but you are going to see credits on the other two. There's no foreign transaction fees, which is good at you get cellular wireless telephone protection. I believe that's a Mastercard benefit that they've chosen to include. And then there's a couple of other things that come with the card. So, you know, that's a pretty cool no annual fee card. It's pretty basic, but hey, if your main goal is you just want to earn points on rent or mortgages, then probably you'd want to go for this card, okay? because you're not losing anything by getting it. And if you decide not to use it in the future, well, it doesn't cost you anything to keep it open either. All right, let's move on to the next one. But first, if you have a lot of credit cards and you're looking for a way to keep up to date on payments and rewards, you have to check out Max Rewards, the sponsor of today's video. It is a smartphone app that pulls data on all your credit cards in one place. From your transactions to your balances to your due dates to points and rewards balances, even if your cards are from different banks, so you don't have to log in to each bank's app. You've got everything in one place. It'll also tell you which card from your wallet to use where to earn the maximum rewards in points and cash back. And if you have MX cards, the premium version of Max Rewards, MaxRewards Gold, is especially useful because it activates all of your MX offers for you so you never miss a deal. I've sometimes even been out and come home to an email saying I used an MX offer and saved money without even knowing it. You can get a 7-day free trial of Max Rewards Gold with my link below using code hedges 25 when you sign up. And you'll also get a three-month discount on the annual plan if you choose to continue after the free trial. There are also loads of free features that you can check out. Link is down below. All right, so let's look at the mid-tier Obsidian card. >> The Obsidian Order. >> You get $200 worth of built cash. That's your kind of welcome bonus that doesn't have a spend requirement. You get 4% back in built cash on purchases excluding rent and mortgage. Okay, so that's exactly the same as the no annual fee card in that respect. You get one point per dollar on rent and mortgage and three points per dollar on your choice of dining or grocery. Grocery is limited to $25,000 per year. It's curious that that limit is exactly the same as the MX Gold. I wonder why. Maybe that's some sort of special number in the credit card industry. I don't know. You get two points per dollar on travel and one point per dollar on everyday spend. All right, let's now look at the partner benefits. Five plus points per dollar at partner restaurants. That's in the dining program. And this is when you select dining as your 3x category. If you select grocery, then it'll be less. Three points per dollar at fitness studios, three points per dollar on lift rides once you've linked your lift. So that's the same. And then two points per dollar at Walgreens. That's the same as the no annual fee one. You get a $100 built hotel credit each year and it's $50 uh per half year and that's for built travel portal hotel bookings. So that wipes out the annual fee actually. Then there's no foreign transaction fees. There's cell phone protection and there's a few more things including a load of travel protections which the no annual fee card didn't have. So that's the difference between this one and the no annual fee card or that's one difference. This one you start to get a load of travel protections. I'm sure you'll see those on the higherend card as well. And your fee is $95. All right, let's now look at the Built Palladium card. So with this one, you get $300 worth of built cash when you apply and get approved. There's also 50,000 built points plus built gold status after spending $4,000 on everyday purchases in the first 3 months. I wonder if that gold status is every year though or if it's just for the first year. Okay, I'm not totally sure about that. We'll have to see. You get the same 4% back in built cash on all everyday purchases, one points per dollar on rent and mortgage, and two points per dollar on everyday spend. All right, so this is kind of like the Capital One Venture or Venture X. just two points per dollar on everything. There are no spending categories. Then the partner benefits, it's four points per dollar at partner restaurants. That's cuz you get two points per dollar on everything. It's four points per dollar at partner fitness studios, lift rides, uh once you've lit your account, okay, so basically it's all the same. Okay, just accounting for the two points per dollar on everything. Then you get $200 worth of built cash issued annually. Okay, and up to 100 of that can be rolled over into the next calendar year. $400 worth of built travel portal hotel credits. That's applied twice a year. So, it's $200 statement credit every six months. There's no foreign transaction fees. You get priority pass, which they're saying is worth $469 a year. That's the price if you actually bought it, but who buys it? So, I don't really think it's worth that much. Uh cell phone protection, and then you get all of the uh trip delay and baggage insurance and all that kind of stuff um that you'd expect on a premium card. And this is a premium card because the annual fee is $4.95. So those are the benefits of all three cards. The names are the same as in the link. The annual fees are the same and the benefits are pretty much the same too, I believe. Can't quite remember off the top of my head. But what is slightly different is how you unlock earning points on rent and mortgage payments. So some people are upset at Richard Kerr saying that he lied when he said that paying rent and mortgages with the cards would always be free. Um but he didn't actually lie. It is free. You just won't earn any points on those transactions unless you exchange some built cash for that privilege. And the amount that you have to exchange actually exactly correlates to there being a 3% fee. So basically, for $30 worth of built cash, you can unlock one point per dollar on $1,000 worth of built rent or mortgage payments. Thus, if your rent or mortgage was say $2,000, you would need $60 worth of built cash. If your rent was $3,000, you would need $90 worth of built cash to exchange in order to earn one point per dollar. So, 3,000 points on that payment. Basically, the easy way to calculate this is to figure out what 3% of your rent payment is, and that's how much built cash you're going to need. Now, when you get the cards, they all start you off with a certain amount of built cash. So, that your first rent or mortgage payment should be free, okay? Unless you have a ridiculously high payment. Then, come the second month, you should have already earned enough built cash to cover earning points on your next rental mortgage payment since you earn 4% in built cash on everyday spend with the card. That means that you have to spend $750 to get the $30 in built cash that you need to cover each $1,000 worth of rent or mortgage payments, okay, to earn points on it. So, for a payment of $2,000 per month, you'll need to spend $1,500 on the card that month. While not a complete deal breakaker, is quite disappointing since it's way more than the current five transactions of any amount that you need to make in order to earn points each month. The guys from Built joke about five bananas. >> Banana. >> Oh, no. I'm good, man. I got five. >> I was thinking, what are they talking about? But now I get it. They're saying that people make five really low transactions. What is a banana at Trader Joe's? It's like what, 19 cents or something for a banana. So, just buy a banana 5 days in a row and you've done your five transactions. Okay, there. So, they were kind of joking about that. So, basically, you won't be able to do that. Now, the card will have to be one of the main cards that you use each month. For me, I need to cover $1,860 in mortgage payments on my primary residence. So, I would have to spend $1,385 uh on other things to get enough built cash to cover that. Okay. I could probably do it just by adding the card as a payment method for things like car insurance, health insurance, utilities, etc. Stuff that I personally normally just get one point per dollar on. And actually, if I got the premium card, I'd be getting two points per dollar on that stuff anyway, although I'd be paying an extra annual fee. So, you know, but what I'm saying is I could probably do it without messing with my cards that I use for the big earning categories, all right? Like dining, grocery, where I like to earn either MX or Chase points or gas. You know, I'm earning 4% back in Bitcoin with the Gemini card on gas. All right, I'll put a link for that one down below as well. It's a really good card. So, the advantage with built cash is that now if you have multiple properties though, you can actually pay more than one property each month. It's unlimited now. You just if you got enough built cash, you can do it and you can earn points on them. You can also use built cash for lift rides at one:1. So $1 in built cash equals $1 at lift. You can also use it for hotel bookings on built travel as well. So if you have a surplus of it, it could really be quite useful since you're basically earning 4% cash back on top of built points if you have enough spending in those categories for it to be useful. So anyway, what is my final conclusion on this? Are these cards ruined? Well, no. I don't think they're ruined. I think they've just become more realistic. And hopefully these changes will make them profitable for the issuing bank so that Built doesn't have to go running off to find a new issuer every few years. Okay. This was famously unprofitable for Wells Fargo. That's why they changed issuer. Will I get one of these cards now? Yeah, I think I probably will. Maybe not just yet. I think I'm going to think it over and think about which one is right for me. But I may end up getting the built blue card. That's the most obvious one for me in February when it comes out since if you apply now, technically you're just pre-ordering it for February anyway. Now, if you want one of these cards, you can actually sign up for the built program in the links down below. You can link any card currently in your wallet so that you can use their dining program, which gives you three extra points at most restaurants in the program on top of what you earn on whatever card you link. And then you have a built account ready should you want to apply for any of the three new built cards. Oh, and there's one more interesting thing about this card, and that is that the interest is capped at 10% for a year for new card holders. That is the amount that Trump recently announced that he wants to cap interest at for one year. Yet, it's unclear how he intends to force banks to do that, but Built has just done it voluntarily. So, it's like the guys at Built, tell me you're a Republican without telling me they're Republican. Okay, I don't know whether they're Republican or not. Maybe they'd planned it that way anyway, and it's just a weird coincidence. All right, guys. That's the video for today. Don't forget to get a free trial of Max Rewards Gold, plus a 3month discount if you choose to continue after the trial with my link down below and code hedges 25. I know it's 2026 now, but we'll get the code changed soon. All right, links for built and Gemini card, other stuff we talked in the video will be down below as well. Please subscribe if you're new, and we'll see you in the next one. Bye-bye.