아메리칸익스프레스(American Express) - Australia 1980

How American Express differs

One tension in Amex's business model is acceptance, a volume vs. margin trade-off. Because Amex charges a higher merchant discount fee, it is not as widely accepted as Visa or MasterCard. Amex's business model depends on having a higher discount fee, however, making it difficult to lower it. The company has to strike a balance, keeping its fee low enough to attract sufficient merchants, but high enough to fund rich rewards and drive its business model. In countries where Amex charges a small premium, like the US, it has near-parity acceptance, but its card rewards are not significantly more substantial than those of its competitors. In countries where it charges a large premium, its cards often have a much higher rewards payout than competing cards.




Many banks fund their lending, both card and otherwise, through deposits. Without deposits, however, Amex has historically funded its lending through outstanding travelers cheques (which function like non-interest-bearing deposits), the wholesale funding markets, and securitization. As travelers cheques have declined in popularity since the rise of ATMs, Amex has begun seeking traditional deposits through online high-yield savings accounts. The freeze in wholesale funding markets and securitization during the financial crisis of 2007–2010 caused Amex to accelerate these deposit-raising efforts, and also caused them to decrease growth in lending.



Due to its focus on affluent customers, Amex has historically had lower levels of credit losses than other issuers. The gap has almost disappeared for Q3'08 to Q1'09, however, as card issuers of all types experienced heightened credit losses.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Express