When it comes to paying for your purchases online, there are several ways to go about it. One would be to use your credit/debit card directly at the retailer’s website, and the other is to use a more secure method such as PayPal, which when used on services like eBay will protect both the buyer and seller from fraud.PayPal is a rather established platform but it looks like American Express thinks they have what it takes to compete, which is why the credit card company has launched its own payments service called Amex Express Checkout. For the most part and at the core, Amex Express Checkout will work like most payments services.
However American Express is leveraging the fact that they have a ton of registered customers, meaning that these customers can login with their existing accounts to pay for their purchases, instead of having to create a new and separate account, kind of like how Apple ID works across app purchases, music, movies, and now even with Apple Music.
That being said there are some limitations which is that this service, as expected, will be limited to American Express cards. If you don’t have an Amex card, you’d be out of luck. It will be interesting to see how the company fares in the this particular market in which services like PayPal are not only widely used, but have been around much longer.
However according to Leslie Berland, EVP of digital partnerships and development at American Express, “We’re not a company to throw spaghetti at the wall or create a me-too product. We watched and we learned.”
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