American Express, the world’s largest card issuer by purchase volume and the largest integrated payments platform, has aggressively expanded its merchant coverage in India with over 600,000 new merchants added since 2017.
The growth across the country is driven by increased demand from tier 1 and tier 2 cities where American Express Cardmembers want to spend. This includes categories such as online merchants, utilities, insurance, hospitals, retail, grocery stores and fuel stations.
According to Anurag Gupta, Vice President & Head, Global Merchant Services, American Express, “It has been a continuous growth journey for us to match pace with the accelerated digital payments revolution in India. Building on our strong momentum from the past few years, we have enabled Amex Card acceptance in many new categories to displace cash spend. We are targeting sectors such as government payments, education and health care, to provide our Cardmembers even more places to use their cards and do business with more merchants.”
Major new categories signed up by American Express in India this year include:
Premium mobile phone stores
Key tourist attractions
Transport service providers
Luxury accessory retailers
New online retailers
Online payment gateways and aggregators
Sharing more details on the highlights of American Express coverage expansion efforts, Anurag elaborated, “Our focus is on driving acceptance across spend categories. We now have significant coverage across large eCommerce merchants and partner with almost all major online payment gateways and aggregators. To enable our Cardmembers to use their card at retail locations, we are also actively deploying signage and innovative point of purchase displays. To deliver strong value to both Cardmembers and merchants, we have brought in over 150 best-in-class offers from merchant partners such as Taj Hotels, MakeMyTrip, Air India, Vistara, Tanishq, Reliance Digital, Starbucks, Zomato, Swiggy, Delhi Duty Free, Flipkart, Bigbasket, Grofers, Pepperfry, WeWork, Apple and many others.”
Anurag added, “Our commitment to meaningful value and best-in-class experience is the core of our proposition for merchant partners as we connect them to our high spending Cardmember base. We’ve also made investments in our fraud-prevention capabilities to back our merchants leading to the lowest fraud rates in the industry.”
American Express drives higher returns for merchants as its affluent Cardmember base spends three times higher than industry average. It also invests heavily in fraud prevention technology and other business friendly programs like Amex Offers to deliver more value to merchant partners. American Express acquiring partnerships with banks for merchant acquisition makes it easier for merchants to accept all networks including American Express.
Over the last couple of years, more and more merchants across categories started accepting American Express:
Over 50,000 more restaurants added since 2017
Over 29,000 more fuel stations added since 2017
Over 20,000 more healthcare service providers added since 2017
Over 8,000 more educational institutions added since 2017
Over 500 government agencies added since 2017
The company has also seen strong growth across metros and tier-I cities with:
Over 64,000 more merchants added in Delhi-NCR since 2017
Over 60,000 more merchants added in Mumbai since 2017
Over 43,000 more merchants added in Bengaluru since 2017
Over 30,000 more merchants added in Chennai since 2017
Over 33,000 more merchants added in Hyderabad since 2017
Over 27,000 more merchants added in Pune since 2017
American Express merchant partners enjoy many benefits including priority servicing, standardized product-agnostic fee structure, besides other value-added services.