Bilt turned rent into a rewards opportunity, but housing payments are not a casual consumer product. The CFPB meeting shows that reliability now matters more than the points pitch.
Bilt is back under the kind of scrutiny that fast-growing fintech companies usually hope to avoid. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said on June 2 that its officials met with Bilt to understand problems tied to the company's move to a new bank partner and the steps it has taken to make affected consumers whole.
That matters because this is not a dispute over a travel perk or a confusing coupon. Customers were using Bilt to pay rent and mortgages, the largest and most time-sensitive bills in most household budgets. When a housing payment fails, arrives late, or gets trapped between platforms, the customer is the one facing late fees, frozen payment apps, angry landlords, and potential damage to their financial standing.
Bilt's core idea was clever. It gave renters a way to earn rewards on an expense that credit cards had mostly ignored, then used that demand to build a broader payments and loyalty network. Forbes lists Bilt at five million members, nearly a million cardholders, and $500 million in 2025 revenue, with a July 2025 funding round valuing the company at $10.75 billion.
But growth changes the standard. Once a fintech inserts itself between a consumer and a landlord or mortgage servicer, it is no longer just optimizing points. It is part of the payment rail for housing. That brings a different obligation, and customers tend to discover that obligation only when something breaks.
The immediate trouble began around Bilt's transition away from Wells Fargo, which had issued the Bilt Mastercard under a partnership that started in 2022. Bilt moved into its new Bilt 2.0 structure with partners including Cardless and Column, while Senator Elizabeth Warren's May 27 letter also pressed the company on its relationship with Evolve Bank & Trust.
The customer complaints were not all about one thing. Some users said rent or mortgage payments were debited but did not reach the intended recipient. Others said payments were returned or delayed. There were reports of card declines, problems with balances, and confusion around the new product structure. HousingWire reported that Warren cited a 1,300% spike in CFPB complaints in February and asked Bilt CEO Ankur Jain to respond by June 9 with details about delayed or missing payments, chatbot escalations, response times, and compliance with federal credit card laws.
Bilt has said the February transition saw unexpectedly high demand, that some members experienced unacceptable gaps in service, and that outstanding transition issues had been addressed and resolved. That answer may be true as far as the company sees its internal ticket queue. Regulators and customers will care about something more specific: how many people were affected, how long money was delayed, who paid late fees, and whether the same failure can happen again.
AI support is becoming part of the risk
The AI angle is not a side issue here. Warren's letter specifically asked Bilt for data on customer service requests, how many were resolved by a chatbot, how many were escalated to humans, and how long customers waited to reach a representative. That is a serious question for consumer fintech because AI support can look efficient on a dashboard while feeling useless to someone whose rent money is missing.
There is nothing wrong with automation handling routine questions. Most customers do not need a human to reset a password or explain a rewards category. But the moment a financial product touches housing payments, fraud controls, bank transfers, and payment deadlines, support becomes part of the product itself. If a chatbot loops the customer while the landlord is waiting, the company has not reduced friction. It has moved the cost of failure onto the user.
This is the practical lesson for fintech founders. Rewards can acquire customers, but reliability keeps regulators away. A points program can be playful, complicated, and optimized for engagement. Rent cannot. Mortgage payments cannot. The more essential the payment, the less tolerance consumers will have for vague explanations and delayed support.
Bilt still has a valuable idea. Rent and mortgage payments are huge recurring expenses, and consumers clearly want more value from them. The question is whether the company can prove that its infrastructure is as mature as its marketing. The CFPB meeting does not mean enforcement is coming, but it does put Bilt on notice that consumer harm around housing payments will not be treated like ordinary app friction.
What happens next depends on the answers Bilt gives, the remedies it can document, and whether customers see fewer failures when the next rent cycle arrives. For the rest of fintech, the message is already clear. If you turn a household obligation into a rewards product, you inherit the responsibility that comes with the obligation.
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