On Monday, American Express announced Serve, a digital payments platform and electronic wallet that will enable users to pay online and offline merchants with a broad range of payments options, including Visa and MasterCard credit and debit cards.
Serve will be accepted at all online and offline merchants that currently accept American Express, in addition to enabling users to perform Person-2-Person transfers. For offline transactions, users will initially be issued a prepaid Serve card that is directly linked to its electronic wallet. As these cards are considered prepaid, merchants will be charged the lower transaction fee associated with prepaid cards.
Although Serve will undoubtedly introduce an NFC solution shortly, Amex appear to go out of their way to remain technology agnostic and not associate itself too closely with any particular technology.
Partnerships will be core to Serve's long-term vision, focusing on verticals such as social networks, online commerce, gaming and entertainment. At launch, partners include Ticketmaster, Concur and Flipswap. Although Amex is likely to quickly grow this network, the initial list does not appear particularly inspiring.
It is beyond doubt, that Serve is a very core part of Amex long term strategy. And, Amex certainly have considerable assets to bring to the table; merchant network, world class servicing customer organization, robust payments infrastructure and a highly respected brand.
However, at present it is difficult to assess its likelihood of success. Although Amex intend to launch new functionality on an ongoing basis, Serve currently does not appear to bring anything new to the industry.
Moreover, it will be interesting to see if Amex, a company that has traditionally had its strengths in marketing and customer service, is able to compete in an increasingly technical and innovative industry. This might require a far greater cultural shift.
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