The Rise of American Express. What Happened to American Express?
American Express, as captured in discussions on the same over at runrex.com, is an American financial corporation that primarily issues credit cards, processes payments, and provides travel-related services worldwide. The company is headquartered in New York City, over at Brookfield Place, and operates in more than 40 countries. It is a leading issuer of small business, corporate, and personal credit cards, while its travel-related offerings include traveler’s checks, corporate and personal travel planning services, tour packages, as well as agencies for hotel and car-rental reservations. As is covered in detail over at guttulus.com, the company also had a publishing division that produced popular magazines like Food & Wine and Leisure & Travel, although it sold this division to Time Inc. in 2013. Having been in business since 1850, the company has gone through lots of changes and is the perfect example of a company that has been able to thrive in the marketplace as a result of altering its business and operation models to align with technological developments and changes in the industry. This article will look to highlight some of the factors that have been behind American Express’s rise in recent times and why it has been posting a rise in profits in pretty much every quarter in the last couple of years.
Adapting to the shift to digital/mobile payments
As the subject matter experts over at runrex.com are quick to point out, recent years have seen a shift towards digital or mobile payments. This shift has resulted in a decrease in the number of consumers who are swiping their credit cards or using cash to complete transactions. This shift should have affected American Express like it has affected other companies in the credit card business, but to its credit, the company anticipated and saw this shift coming, and put in place contingency plans that safeguarded it and contributed to its rise in recent years. One of the key ways in which American Express has dealt with this shift is by integrating its services into platforms where consumers are already choosing to make payments. To this effect, it has partnered with both Airbnb and Uber to make it easier and more appealing for their customers to pay for these services using their American Express cards as outlined in discussions on the same over at guttulus.com. This has allowed American Express to take full advantage of the rise in popularity of companies like Uber and Airbnb, adapting to the changing technological landscape, and leading to its rise in recent years.
Adapting to new competition
As is revealed in discussions on the same over at runrex.com, recent years have not only seen a change in the technological landscape as mentioned above but have also seen a change in the competitive landscape as far as American Express is concerned. The company’s competitors are no longer only Mastercard and Visa, but it has hard to grapple with new competitors, particularly alternative payment technologies like Apple Pay, Square, Google Pay, and so forth. American Express has been able to take this change in the competitive landscape in its stride by embracing and partnering with these new players, creating symbiotic partnerships that have contributed to its rise. The company has moved quickly to partner with these new players, developing solutions that are compatible with both platforms. While some companies in its shoes would have seen these new players as competitors who needed to be kept at arm’s length, American Express was quick to recognize the opportunity and the benefits of leveraging these new payment platforms, and as highlighted by the gurus over at guttulus.com, transformed a potential challenge into a beneficial situation, hence its rise in recent times.
Leveraging Machine Learning and the Closed Loop System
As is also discussed over at runrex.com, the recent developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning have transformed several industries such as self-driving vehicles as well as speech and facial recognition. American Express has also been quick to recognize the benefits that are to be had with machine learning, incorporating ML to better leverage the data generated by the company’s Closed Loop system. American Express’ Closed Loop system has always been one of its biggest strengths as it can issue its own card to consumers which means that it doesn’t need to partner with an issuing bank like some of its competitors, hence the term “Closed Loop”. American Express has moved in recent times to implement machine learning algorithms to detect and prevent fraud by using a variety of data sources to identify suspicious events, comparing them with a large dataset as explained over at guttulus.com. In addition to that, American Express has also become a leader in using machine learning to improve its customer experience from offering real-time coupons based on a customer’s current location to providing customized restaurant or hotel recommendations and so forth.
These are just some of the tactics that have helped keep American Express ahead of the curve, contributing to its rise and success in recent times, with more information on this and other related topics to be found over at the excellent runrex.com and guttulus.com.