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It’s no longer your mother’s American Express. The iconic credit card company demonstrated that it knows how to stay on trend when it introduced “Amex Send and Split” with PayPal and Venmo in November 2020. Amex’s latest venture, Digital Receipts, is a new feature for customers to find detailed information, identify purchases, and track information from a select group of merchants which include Google, Microsoft, Square, and Apple.

Whether the shift of perception from buttoned up traditional corporate was intentional or not, Amex acknowledged that online shopping has reached unprecedented levels.

“Over the years, through conversations with both our card members and merchants, we’ve heard the desire for greater transparency around purchases,” said Sarkis Kalashian, vice president, American Express enterprise digital and analytics. “We know it will help with reducing confusion about what exactly was purchased by a Card Member and whether a dispute about a charge needs to be opened. Further, with COVID driving more e-commerce purchases, the necessity for more purchase information is even more critical right now. We’re excited to expand the Digital Receipts feature to make our customers’ lives easier during an already stressful time.”

Digital Receipts–which originally launched with iTunes/Apple, but is now available to all members–will show members detailed purchase information, such as the merchant name and logo, order number, date of order, item(s) purchased, and details of cost and merchant description. Members will be able to access this transaction information right from the Amex App or on the American Express website.

The service is now available for customers. “We’ll continue to scale these features based on ongoing research and validation with customers and merchants,” Kalashian said.

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For members who are concerned about more of their digital footprint being online, Kalashian said, “At the end of the day, Digital Receipts is about providing our customers with even greater account protection and peace of mind by helping them easily distinguish legitimate versus fraudulent changes. This information is being provided directly by the merchant and/or Ethoca and Verifi to American Express solely for the purposes of displaying it to the card member only. We do not use it beyond these purposes.” He added that American Express has, “a long-standing commitment to using all necessary administrative, organizational, technical, and physical safeguards to protect the security, integrity, and confidentiality of the personal information we process.”

One of the biggest concerns for credit card owners are fraudulent purchases. Digital Receipts will help customers recognize legitimate purchases with details about what was purchased and when. Amex believes it will reduce the frequency of calls to confirm details of their online transactions and reduce the number of disputed charges.

Recent Amex Trendex data shows that 70% of consumers in the US have contacted their credit card company over a purchase initially believed to be fraudulent or inaccurate, but it was actually a valid charge they or a family member made.

For merchants, Amex said that the new feature, which gives customers greater accessibility to purchase, will build trust in online shopping.

“For me, it’s the way digital receipts make our customers’ lives easier,” Kalashian said. COVID-19 sent many shoppers online; “[More] than ever before, we know that keeping track of purchases can be a challenge. Regardless of online or in-person, Digital Receipts makes it so easy to learn more about a purchase, once a customer expands the details of a transaction, we’ll give them the option to view the digital receipt. Our goal is always to make our experiences frictionless and not overwhelm anyone, so we have come up with some clever ways to handle the integrations and overall UX. I think it’s pretty cool that customers can now quickly answer their questions about a purchase and get on with the things they care most about in life.”


Image: American Express