Amex Plans to Let You Use Rewards Points in a New Way

NEW YORK (MainStreet) -- American Express (Stock Quote: AXP) is looking to add a loyalty component and merge all of its prepaid products with Serve, its digital commerce platform. The would allow cardholders to use rewards points anywhere American Express is taken.

“[This is] all about digital commerce and digital payments moving forward,” Dan Schulman, group president of enterprise growth with American Express said at a KBW analyst conference today. The enhancements are expected to debut sometime this year.

Serve, launched in March 2011, lets users make purchases online or from their mobile phone with merchants that accept American Express cards.

The accounts can be funded by bank accounts, debit cards, credit and charge cards or other Serve accounts, and customers can use those accounts to send and receive money to friends, pay bills and make purchases online.

Amex currently issues each user a reloadable prepaid card linked to a Serve account that can be used at any merchant or ATM that accepts its cards. By linking the platform with all of Amex’s prepaid products, non-traditional Amex cardholders would have access to the service.

It also means traditional credit cardholders would be able to use rewards points to pay at the point of purchase using the Serve interface.

If you add loyalty to a digital platform, “your rewards points would become universal currency,” Schulman said.
The company plans to widen its prepaid arsenal with cards targeted to the students and the underbanked in 2012, Schulman said.

Amex launched a low-fee prepaid debit card in June 2011 and a prepaid card that doubles as a student ID this past November.