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It may or may not qualify as a boom, but consumer business is on a sharp rise at American Express as the company reported early Friday its U.S. consumer-services unit posted an 11% increase in billing for the June quarter compared to the same period last year. That’s the strongest boost in consumer business since the first quarter of 2018, according to the company.
On that performance, the company is bumping up its full-year revenue-growth projection to 10%, its top executives said early Friday during a conference call with equity analysts to discuss AmEx’s second-quarter results.
AmEx credits the performance of its Platinum card for at least some of the jump in its consumer results. The card has added more than $3,500 in new and increased statement credits, while its mobile app has been updated, all as part of a major refresh of the product in the second half of last year. AmEx originally introduced the card in 1984.
With the updates, the premium card’s annual fee has gone from $695 to $895. “For the second half of this year we have great momentum as we lap the Platinum refresh. It’s a great premium product that’s very difficult [for a competitor] to replicate on a global scale,” AmEx chief executive Steve Squeri said during the call.
AmEx is also looking to boost its stake in the restaurant business. It announced in June a $700-million cash proposal to acquire The Fork, a restaurant-booking service operating in 11 European countries plus Australia and owned by TripAdvisor. “it’s a great opportunity,” said Squeri, who also cautioned analysts that the service “will require investment in the second half of the year.”
Part of the reason for that “great opportunity” is the boost in average tickets a venture such as The Fork could offer. On Resy, an online reservation service AmEx acquired in 2019, spending by users is twice that seen at non-Resy locations, Squeri said, citing that statistic as “one reason we want to acquire The Fork.”
Besides M&A, Squeri added that the company is investing in technology for agentic commerce, which allows AI agents to shop and buy products online on behalf of consumers. But AmEx’s take is that the shopping medium needs better consumer protections. “When we think about agentic commerce, how fraught it is with fraud and hallucinations, we’ll be able to back our customers,” Squeri said.
Specifically, that backing will include what Squeri called “agentic insurance,” launched a month ago. “People are a little nervous about interacting in this space. We hope they’ll choose us because of our history of backing our customer,” Squeri said. “We’re not even in the early innings here. We’re in the pre-season.”
For the quarter, AmEx posted a 10% increase in revenue, to $19.6 billion, including net card fees that rose 16% to $2.9 billion. Discount revenue, made up of the fees merchants pay to accept AmEx cards, increased 9% to $10.2 billion.
