Bilt Breaks From Wells Fargo, Launches Three New Cardless Credit Cards

Bilt is ending its relationship with Wells Fargo and issuing credit cards with Cardless after February 2026. The move is an important change in strategy for Bilt, which will be offering three card levels rewarding homeowners, renters, and students.

By breaking away from Wells Fargo, Bilt can manage the way it serves customers. It’s also a transition toward embedded fintech partnerships, in which startups team up with infrastructure providers like Cardless rather than with traditional banks. 

The move, said Bilt, would facilitate further innovation and convenience, along with broader acceptance for payments associated with housing. like HOA dues and mortgages.

Bilt CEO Ankur Jain said, “By launching our own cards, we can finally bring our full vision to life without compromise. We’ve designed every element of these cards — from the rewards to the fees — to meet the real-world needs of our members.”

All new Bilt cards will offer rent rewards, but higher-end versions will likely offer additional benefits as well, such as travel protections and elite status matches. They will all be made under the First Electronic Bank and processed via Mastercard.

The company says members will be able to add their new Bilt cards to Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other digital wallet services, and the virtual cards will be delivered instantly through the Bilt mobile app.

Bilt’s move into more housing categories puts pressure on subprime lenders, who mostly offer basic cards without meaningful rewards.

Bilt targets students and apartment-building renters new to credit, which could steal market share from secured cards and starter products. That is, if the company holds to its promise to get rent payments and tuition to do more.

Subprime-focused fintechs may also be pushed to rethink how they integrate payments into everyday consumers spending.

The new reward cards issued by Bilt aim to include things besides rent. They reward points on student housing, dorm fees, and even monthly mortgages. That might become a new benchmark for what’s desirable in instruments for credit access for thin-file or rebuilding borrowers.

Products like Chime, Mission Lane, and Petal have gained committed fan bases among new entrants to credit, but few provide full rewards against fixed monthly payments.

As Experian points out, the number of consumers using rent or alternative payments to set up credit has grown between 2022 and 2024, demonstrating demand for products in closer reward.

The departure from Wells Fargo may also be motivated by limits in the traditional co-branded banking relationship. While Wells Fargo took Bilt to market rapidly, the structure limits freedom in fees and reward structures.

With Cardless, Bilt has direct access to back-end processing, compliance support, and near-real-time updates — functionality that enables optimization of the product much more aggressively.

In the subprime lending market, this rollout is but the latest sign that all-in embedded finance continues to erode legacy credit silos.

End-to-end controlled user experience platforms like Bilt can experiment with rewards, pricing, and underwriting in a way that legacy players can’t without rebuilding their tech infrastructure.

The rollout is set to begin in early 2026, when existing cardholders will be given the option to transition to one of the three new Bilt options. Bilt also plans future innovations, like new Point redemptions related to real estate and down payments.

Bilt’s fintech-first transition is more than just a new name — it’s an attempt to rethink the connection between consumers and credit as it relates to their largest monthly bills — a challenge to subprime lenders to catch up or lose ground.