Overview:

Why Bilt’s Credit-Card-Based Rent Rewards Faced Challenges — and How eApartment Life’s Stablecoin Vision Solves the Core Problem

Bilt Rewards pioneered the idea of earning loyalty points on rent payments — a huge monthly expense for millions of renters — by issuing a co-branded credit card that let renters pay rent without incurring the typical 3% transaction fee while still earning rewards points. This innovative value proposition helped Bilt rapidly grow its user base and expand into partnerships beyond rent (e.g., travel rewards and neighborhood offers).

However, the economics of traditional credit-card issuing presented a structural challenge:

• Banks issuing the Bilt Mastercard (notably Wells Fargo) lost as much as ~$10 million per month on the arrangement because cardholders were primarily using the card for rent payments — which don’t carry merchant fees — and not carrying a balance or generating other revenue streams the bank expected.

• Those underwriting assumptions — that renters would carry balances or spend broadly on other categories — didn’t materialize, making the program uneconomic for the issuer and contributing to an early termination of the partnership.

As a result, Bilt continues to iterate its product (new card lineups, expanded partners, mortgage rewards, and broader payment options), but the underlying reliance on credit-card rails still exposes it to the inherent costs and limitations of that system.

eApartment Life’s Stablecoin-Based Rent + Loyalty Vision (Future-Looking)

The concept with eApartment Life reimagines rent payments and loyalty rewards by eliminating the traditional credit-card processing layer entirely — including the ~3% fee — by enabling tenants to pay rent directly with a stablecoin built into the community’s commerce platform. Under this model:

1. Processing fees are virtual-asset native, not bank/credit-network dependent, significantly lowering or eliminating the cost burden on tenants and properties.

2. Tenants still earn tokenized Loyalty Rewards Tokens on rent payments — analogous to rewards points — but in a programmable, on-chain form that can be redeemed, traded, or accrued across services within the eApartment Life ecosystem.

3. The platform can internally settle rent and related transactions without traditional card fees, while expanding utility for loyalty tokens (e.g., neighborhood services, on-site merchants, community rewards, DeFi integrations).

4. Stablecoin payments and tokenized loyalty increase efficiency, transparency, and utility for both tenants and property owners, unlocking network effects that credit-card rewards alone cannot achieve.

This approach directly addresses the core economic challenge that Bilt faced — the cost of subsidizing rent payments through a credit-card model — by leveraging programmable money to transfer value and rewards through a more scalable, lower-cost settlement layer.

Executive Summary:

1. Problem

2. Solution – eApartment Life

3. Product

4. Business Model

5. Why We Win

6. Market Opportunity

7. Growth Strategy

8. Thesis