American Express

American Express operates a multi-sided financial services model built around its proprietary card and merchant network. It creates value by attracting consumers and businesses to its payment products, onboarding merchants to accept those products, and then monetising transaction flow, account relationships and related services. The same network also supports loyalty, account servicing, virtual payments, merchant marketing and advertising, enabling American Express to capture revenue from both sides of the transaction while using its first-party spend data to improve targeting, retention and measurement.

American Express is a publicly listed US payments and financial services company operating a closed-loop card network that connects cardmembers, merchants and business customers. Its core activities include issuing consumer and corporate payment cards, providing merchant acceptance and payment processing, offering business payment automation tools, and running digital account servicing and loyalty products. It also operates merchant-funded marketing products such as Amex Offers and a newer advertising business, Amex Ads, which monetise access to its cardholder base and transaction data.

The company makes money through merchant discount fees on card spend, annual card fees, interest and related lending income, subscription-style ancillary services, and transaction or service fees from business payment solutions. Its customers span consumers, cardmembers, merchants, enterprise finance teams and advertisers seeking closed-loop targeting and measurement against American Express cardholder spending.