Financial services giant American Express (AXP 0.08%) is dipping its toes into digital waters. I mean next-generation digital stuff, adding blockchain tokens and Web3 features to its new app for high-end travel experiences.
But the company isn't leaning into that detail. The marketing around the just-released AmEx Travel App is all about convenience and simplicity. The specific feature that relies on the Ethereum (ETH +0.36%) is called AmEx Passport, designed to preserve memories for easy access after the trip. Most travelers miss getting stamps in their physical passport books these days, according to the press materials -- so here are some digital stamps from AmEx instead.
And you'll barely notice if you skim through the press release. The presence of blockchain tokens is easy to miss entirely when you use the app.
Is American Express approaching the newfangled blockchain and Web3 stuff in exactly the right way? I think so, and here's why.
NYSE: AXP
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Inside the digital stamp
To find out exactly what's happening in those digital Amex Passport stamps, I had to look at other sources. Crypto news site CoinDesk got some more detail directly from American Express.
Amex Digital Labs VP Colin Marlowe explained that the stamps are technically non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum blockchain. They don't hold any value and can't be traded or transferred. They add some keepsake details every time you use your Amex card while traveling, creating an everlasting memory collection on the public blockchain. That's all. But again, American Express isn't pushing the crypto connection in your face.
"We wanted to speak to it in a way that was natural for the travel experience itself, and so we talk about these things as stamps, and they're represented as tokens," Marlowe told CoinDesk. "We weren't trying to sell these or sort of generate any like short term revenue. The angle is to make a travel experience with Amex feel really rich, really different, and kind of set it apart."
How Amex keeps travelers happy (and still pays the bills)
That tracks. I've been an American Express cardholder since 2000 (yeah, I'm old) and the company always bends over backward to keep traveling cardholders happy. The company makes plenty of money. It charges above-average transaction fees from retailers, which is why some shops refuse to support these cards in favor of lower-cost Visa (V +0.78%) or Mastercard (MA +0.36%) options. High-end cards like The Platinum Card and Blue Cash Preferred come with beefy annual fees, too. But the customer can still come out ahead by taking advantage of generous American Express features like the rewards program, airport lounges, and included rental car insurance.
I'm not trying to sell American Express cards here. This is just how the company tends to work. Using American Express isn't supposed to feel cheap or complicated. It's meant to be a rewarding premium experience. The blockchain-based memory-making tools fit snugly in that broader approach to the credit card business.
CRYPTO: ETH
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Base, ERC‑721, and the nerdy bits you can skip
And it's also a perfect fit for early Web3 apps.
The AmEx Travel App hides its crypto-ness under a warm blanket, easy to miss or ignore. As long as the memory-keeping features work, nobody really cares where the digital passport stamps and personal notes are stored. It's a valueless ERC-721 NFT, but you shouldn't really care about that geekery.
The trick is that the tokens really work for this purpose. Diving one more layer into the nerdy depths, Ethereum tokens can hold all sorts of data, making that stuff available worldwide, for as long as Ethereum exists.
Access and ownership are managed by Ethereum itself, by way of the Base network. Sorry for bringing in another technical quirk that won't matter to most app users or Amex investors, but there's a point to this connection. Working with Base makes an Amex partner out of its creator, crypto giant Coinbase Global (COIN 0.88%), while speeding up the Amex app's Ethereum access.
All in all, that's a professional crypto package -- not too shabby for an early swing by an old-school financial giant.
Image source: Getty Images.
The quiet way to test Web3 at scale
I don't know about you, but I think American Express is checking all the right boxes on the Web3 checklist.
The new app meshes nicely with the card issuer's brand, offers simple data storage functions to its users, and lets you forget how the whole thing works. I can talk until I'm blue in the face about Web3 ideals like personalization, decentralized networks, and direct money flows from consumers to creators -- but Amex can get your attention without saying a word.
It's showing how Web3 should work, in a very simple format. The Passport could evolve into a customer loyalty program later on, but it's a bare-bones memory helper for now.
Great job, American Express. Years from now, I just might remember this app as the start of mass-market Web3 launches.
