Bilt
“Can a rent-rewards loyalty network become the primary financial relationship for American renters and homeowners — owning the card, the payments rails, the merchant data layer, and eventually the path to homeownership?”
Founded in 2019 as Theo Rewards, Bilt launched in 2021 as the first loyalty program to award points on rent — America's largest household expense — via a co-branded credit card with Wells Fargo. After the Wells Fargo relationship soured over loss economics in 2023, Bilt executed a major stack overhaul in 2025, replacing Wells Fargo with a bespoke four-party structure (Column as chartered bank, Cardless as servicer, Fidem as capital provider, on Mastercard rails), signaling ambition beyond a single card product toward a full 'financial OS for home and neighborhood'. The 2025 acquisition of Banyan and the Adyen partnership extend Bilt's data and payment infrastructure well past rent into everyday merchant commerce.