American Express merchant services is the payment network infrastructure that enables businesses to accept Amex credit cards and charge cards for customer transactions. Using it presents a clear operational trade-off: while the business’s merchant fees are higher than those of other major card networks, accepting it gives your company direct access to affluent customers, premium cardholders, and large organizations that spend significantly more on average.

Amex credit cards are highly favored by these high-spending segments due to its premium membership rewards program, which offers points that cardholders can redeem for travel, shopping, and other luxury experiences. Globally, there are more than 150 million American Express cards in circulation as of 2025.

For businesses, accommodating these preferences is often necessary to capture corporate spending and protect conversion rates. Below, we’ll cover what businesses need to know about American Express: its operational scope, target customer segments, fee structure, and most popular competitors as well as how to accept American Express as a payment method.

What’s in this article?

• How does American Express work?
  
• Where is American Express used?
  
• Who uses American Express?
  
• American Express merchant fees
  
• Pros and cons of accepting American Express
  
• American Express security measures
  
• How to accept American Express payments
  
• Alternatives to American Express
  
• How Stripe Payments can help
  

How does American Express work?

American Express offers a range of products and services that cater to different types of customers and businesses. The primary structural differences between American Express and networks like Visa or Mastercard are data and network layout.

Visa and Mastercard are open-loop networks that don’t issue cards directly. Instead, they act as an intermediary between an independent issuing bank and an acquiring bank. American Express, on the other hand, acts as a closed-loop network since it serves as the card issuer, network, and merchant acquirer.

This direct relationship gives the network unique advantages. Businesses that accept American Express work with their merchant services, which offer businesses data insights on customer spending patterns and marketing strategy to help attract and retain customers.

Transaction authorization flow

Because of this consolidated structure, the step-by-step transaction flow runs rapidly behind the scenes:

1. Capture: The business inputs the transaction total into their checkout system, and the customer swipes, inserts, or taps their physical card or mobile device against the reader.

2. Routing: The point-of-sale (POS) system captures the encrypted payload and transmits the transaction request through the payment gateway directly to the American Express processing network.

3. Authorization: Because American Express manages the end-to-end framework, it instantly verifies the cardholder's account status, evaluates real-time credit availability, runs internal risk algorithms, and sends an immediate approval or decline message back to the business’s terminal.

4. Settlement: Once authorized, the transaction is batched. American Express handles the electronic debit from the customer’s account and deposits the funds into the business’s bank account, minus the network’s merchant fees.

What POS systems are compatible with American Express?

Accepting American Express does not require specialized hardware or proprietary merchant terminals. Virtually all modern POS hardware and software solutions are natively fully compatible with the network.

Whether your business operates on traditional countertop terminals from legacy providers like Verifone and Ingenico, or uses modern cloud-based and mobile app platforms like Square, Clover, Toast, Shopify POS, and Stripe Terminal, American Express acceptance is integrated into the processing software.

If your payment processor supports major credit card transactions, activating American Express is typically a simple matter of selecting the option within your standard digital dashboard account settings without altering your existing checkout equipment.

Where is American Express used?

American Express’s global usage is influenced by customer spending habits, business trends, and regulatory conditions. In more developed markets with strong credit systems and higher incomes, American Express often finds success with its premium credit card offerings and rewards program, particularly in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.

In emerging markets or regions with different regulatory environments and financial habits, such as Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East, the business faces more challenges and often adapts its strategy to better serve local preferences and conditions.

Because payment preferences and network cross-border capabilities vary significantly by region, businesses looking to grow internationally should verify local American Express market acceptance rates and regional customer habits before launching operations in a new country.

Who uses American Express?

American Express caters to different customer segments and industries. AmEx’s appeal is consistently tied to its reputation for premium services, its extensive rewards program, and its aura of prestige, all of which influence which customers and businesses use these cards and how. Broadly, the business’s customer base can be categorized into these segments:

• Affluent customers: American Express is exceptionally popular among affluent customers who are drawn to premium card offerings such as its Platinum and Centurion cards, which come with extensive rewards, travel benefits, and exclusive services. These cardholders use their accounts for everyday spending, travel, dining, and high-end shopping, actively taking advantage of the cards’ rewards points and prestigious status.

• High-value B2B: Businesses ranging from small startups to large corporations make up another substantial portion of American Express’s clientele. Corporate clients and entrepreneurs use Amex’s business credit cards, corporate expense management solutions, and business travel accounts to optimize cash flow and track company expenditures. These corporate cards and Travel and Entertainment (T&E) programs are heavily used for purchasing business supplies, covering core operational expenses, and handling employee client entertainment.

Benefits of accepting American Express for your business

• Access to affluent customer base: Accepting American Express cards can attract an affluent customer segment. Because these customers often have higher spending power, their patronage can translate into larger average transactions for businesses.

• Digital finance tools: American Express’s digital tools, including online account management and mobile payment options, provide businesses with modern, efficient ways to handle transactions and track spending. This digital integration can enhance customer experience, streamline transactions, and simplify financial tracking and reporting.

• Data reporting: American Express provides businesses with valuable data insights and marketing opportunities that can help them understand their customers better, customize their offerings, and target their marketing efforts more effectively. This service is particularly beneficial for businesses that want to refine their customer engagement strategies and boost customer loyalty.

American Express business cards

For business clients, using an American Express card can offer financial management services alongside flexible business financing solutions like business loans and lines of credit to manage cash flow or fund expansions.

For smaller businesses or those just starting out, using a card helps build a strong credit profile backed by high-level customer service and dedicated account support.

Corporate clients can deploy customized card programs and expense management solutions while taking advantage of enhanced travel benefits (such as airport lounge access, travel insurance, and concierge services) to deliver savings on travel expenditures.

American Express merchant fees

American Express has a range of products and services, each with its own fee structure. These fees can vary based on the product, the cardholder’s credit profile, individual agreements, market conditions, and other factors. American Express’s fee structures are subject to change. For the most current and specific fee information, businesses should contact American Express or review the terms and conditions of the specific product or service.

American Express’s typical fee structure is outlined below.

• Annual card fees: The annual fees for American Express credit cards vary extensively, ranging from no fee to nearly $900. Cards with more rewards and benefits, including enrollment in the Membership Rewards program, travel credits, or access to airline lounges, typically come with higher annual fees. The American Express Business Gold Card and the Business Platinum Card have higher annual fees that reflect their extensive travel benefits and rewards opportunities.

• Interest rates: Balances that customers carry on American Express cards are subject to interest rates. These rates vary based on the card type and the cardholder’s creditworthiness and can range from competitive low rates for highly qualified customers to higher rates for those with less credit history or lower credit scores.

• Merchant fees: American Express is known for charging higher merchant transaction fees, which can vary based on the business’s size, industry, and transaction volume. Businesses can expect to pay a merchant discount rate set as a percentage of the transaction value for each American Express payment to their business, usually 1.43% to 3.3%.

• Cash advance fees: Cardholders who use their American Express card to get cash advances will face associated fees for that service.

• Late and returned payment fees: If a cardholder misses a payment or if a payment is returned, American Express may charge late payment or returned payment fees.

• Foreign transaction fees: Businesses and customers who use their American Express cards for transactions in foreign currencies may face foreign transaction fees. Many of American Express’s higher-end cards waive these fees, which can mean significant savings for businesses and customers who travel regularly or make many international transactions.

• Financing fees: American Express business lines of credit typically come with interest rates but have no application or origination fees. These rates are competitive and are based on factors such as the business’s creditworthiness.

• Employee card fees: Businesses that issue American Express cards to employees may see additional fees per employee card. These fees can vary based on the business’s selected card program.

• OptBlue fees: Small businesses working with American Express can participate in the OptBlue program. In this program, the business’s rates for accepting American Express payments are determined by their payment processor. The rates under this program are set by individual processors and, though the processor may include a markup in the fee, the rates tend to be lower overall if the business secures a low markup. Businesses that process less than $1 million annually in American Express transactions qualify for OptBlue.

• Voice authorization fee: Amex charges a fee of 0.65% whenever a business’s point-of-sale (POS) system can’t reach the Amex authorization and the business calls in an authorization.

Pros and cons of accepting American Express

There are multiple pros and cons of accepting American Express cards for businesses to consider.

For many companies, the math heavily favors accepting American Express. For B2B companies looking to land corporate clients who buy in bulk using corporate expense profiles, turning away Amex means risking losing high-value transactions to competitors. Ultimately, the massive boost in buying power and conversions completely absorbs any minor backend network premium.

American Express security measures

American Express employs a comprehensive range of security measures to protect customer data. For example, it complies with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), a set of technical and operational standards developed to protect payment card data. PCI DSS requirements include maintaining secure networks and systems, protecting cardholder data, implementing strong access control measures, monitoring and testing networks regularly, and maintaining an information security policy​​.

Additionally, the American Express Tokenization Service includes a token vault, payment token issuing and provisioning, token lifecycle management, and risk services to help prevent fraud. Tokenization reduces exposure to data breaches by replacing sensitive payment credentials with randomly generated token numbers. This service also helps in reducing PCI compliance scope for businesses by storing tokens instead of card credentials​​.

How to accept American Express payments

Businesses that want to accept American Express as a payment method must complete these steps:

1. Establish a merchant account: Set up a merchant account, which can be done through an acquiring bank or a payments provider such as Stripe. Stripe’s integration is user-friendly for businesses because it automatically enables American Express acceptance alongside other major card brands without the need to open a separate merchant account. In other words, Stripe handles all the heavy lifting, contracting, and background network provisioning on your behalf, allowing you to instantly accept Amex transactions through your unified account dashboard without signing a secondary merchant agreement.
   

2. Agree to contract terms: Businesses must agree to the contract terms set by American Express, which will outline the operational and financial terms and conditions of accepting Amex cards and each party’s rights and obligations. For example, American Express has rules that require merchants to resolve disputed transactions and chargebacks within a 20-day window.

3. Ensure compatibility: To accept American Express payments, the business must confirm that its payment terminals or POS systems are compatible with Amex cards in all applicable environments including in physical stores, online, and through mobile applications.

4. Maintain PCI DSS compliance: Businesses that accept card payments must ensure constant compliance with PCI DSS, which regulates the protection of card information during and after transactions.

5. Display the Amex acceptance mark: Displaying the universal blue-and-white American Express acceptance mark at your physical checkout counters, on your store windows, or as a payment logo icon in your website's digital footer can boost your store's conversion rates among high-value shoppers.

Once you are set up, your business is ready to start accepting American Express payments. Although the exact timeline for merchant payouts depends on your specific merchant agreement, most American Express merchant payments take 1 to 3 business days to settle.

Alternatives to American Express

Businesses have many alternatives to American Express. The most popular options and their core features are outlined below.

Alternate card networks

• Visa and Mastercard: Visa and Mastercard are widely accepted global card networks with offerings for different customer segments. They are known for lower merchant fees compared with those of American Express.

• Discover: Discover, another credit card alternative used in the US, has similar benefits to American Express but typically comes with lower fees.

• Local card networks: Local card networks are prevalent in many regions: for example, UnionPay is a popular option in China, while RuPay has a strong foothold in India.

Alternate payment methods

• Digital wallets: Services such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay are becoming increasingly popular payment methods. These wallets often integrate with a variety of card networks.

• Direct debit and cash payments: Direct bank transfers and cash payments maintain a strong presence across the global payments scene, especially in regions with lower credit card penetration.

How Stripe Payments can help

Stripe Payments provides a unified, global payments solution that helps any business—from scaling startups to global enterprises—accept payments online, in person, and around the world.

Stripe Payments can help you:

• Optimize your checkout experience: Create a frictionless customer experience and save thousands of engineering hours with prebuilt payment UIs, access to 125+ payment methods, and Link, a wallet built by Stripe.
  
• Expand to new markets faster: Reach customers worldwide and reduce the complexity and cost of multicurrency management with cross-border payment options, available in 195 countries across 135+ currencies.
  
• Unify payments in person and online: Build a unified commerce experience across online and in-person channels to personalize interactions, reward loyalty, and grow revenue.
  
• Improve payments performance: Increase revenue with a range of customizable, easy-to-configure payment tools, including no-code fraud protection and advanced capabilities to improve authorization rates.
  
• Move faster with a flexible, reliable platform for growth: Build on a platform designed to scale with you, with 99.999% historical uptime and industry-leading reliability.
  

Learn more about how Stripe Payments can power your online and in-person payments, or get started today.