American Express is one of the most popular financial firms in the world. The multinational corporation recently announced that it is giving out sign-up bonuses to merchants that want to integrate American Express. This will save them the cost of accepting the card. Some merchants have received almost $500,000 in sign up bonuses. This is according to the reports from the Wall Street Journal.
American Express Competes With Visa and Mastercard
Over the last five years, the company’s shares have risen by 32%. This increase is poor when you consider the fact that its competitors, Mastercard and Visa have experienced 230% and 190% rise in shares over the same period. So, the sign-up bonuses are being offered to get more merchants and pick up the pace.
American Express has historically been an option for high-end customers. So, it is expensive to integrate. Speaking to CNBC, one of the executives at American Express said that the bonuses are “targeted sign-on incentives”. The incentives seem to be effective as over three million merchants have integrated American Express since 2017. The executive said that they hope to meet up with Mastercard and Visa before the end of the year.
At the time of writing, the market capitalization of Mastercard was $279 billion while the market capitalization of Visa was about $386 billion. However, the market capitalization of American Express is about $98 billion. Both Mastercard and Visa have had a lot of success over the last eight years and are among Wall Street’s favorite stocks. Their stocks have primarily gotten double-digit gains over the years. On the other hand, American Express has suffered double-digit losses over the years.
Hopefully, the sign-up bonuses will help incentivize merchants to integrate the app and give American Express the push it needs to get back into the game.
