Affiliation

How they do it: By cooperating with 3rd party businesses, American Express can actively drive customers to spent money with them, e.g. through giving an increased amount of loyalty reward points for certain partners.

Cash Machine

How they do it: American Express developed the traveller’s cheque in 1891. It is a business model innovation based on the Cash Machine pattern. It emerged from the problem faced by American Express’ own employees who travelled abroad and had difficulty obtaining cash in a foreign country.

Customer Loyalty

How they do it: American Express lets its credit card customers collect reward points for each spent. By offering money and in-kind rewards for a certain amount of collected reward points, customers are incentivized to use the card more.

Direct Selling

How they do it: American Express markets its credit cards directly to end customers with targeted advertisement at events, in publications or also direct via mail.

Layer Player

How they do it: American Express focuses on providing payment solutions to customers e.g. in form of credit cards and traveller checks. Although it focuses mainly on payment solutions it also cooperates with other 3rd parties to make their overall product more attractive to customers.

Leverage Customer Data

How they do it: American Express uses customer’s data to target advertising of 3rd party services. As the company has a lot of information about its customers spending habits and amounts, it can cluster customers according to their wealth and purchasing power and hence provides an attractive value proposition for its 3rd party partners.

Two-sided Market

How they do it: American Express facilitates interactions between two groups of clients, namely the vendors (businesses accepting credit card payments) as well as the end customers (customers purchasing goods and services with their credit card).