Here’s a quick infographic for followers of the credit card industry. As part of the Bloomberg Businessweek article How Bad Will It Get for American Express?, there was an informative graphic comparing the number of cards, number of accepting merchants, and total dollar amount of purchases processed by the four major US payment networks: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. (Click to enlarge.)
I was a little surprised that the gap between the number of Visa’s and Mastercard’s was so big. I thought they were roughly equal. It was also interesting that the number of Discover and AmEx cards out there were about the same, and while Discover has more accepting locations, AmEx process over double the amount of payments.
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Bummer. I’ve had Amex for a long time, but with the loss of Costco and SPG going to Marriott, our Amex will lose a ton of value in 2016. We only use the spg stuff a few times a year but it’s nice to have. More importantly, they provide constant credits for spending at places we already shop.
We have or have had cards with all the big lenders and honestly, they don’t compare to how great Amex has been for us the last 15-20 years. We would get other lender cards for the short-term points but long-term Amex was our weapon of choice.
Any suggestions for a card that rewards holders over the long term ? I’m not talking about rewards points but intangibles like credits and services?
Among major credit card issuers IMHO AMEX and Discover have the best customer service by far..
You will pry my AMEX from my cold dead hands…. As long as they continue offering 6% cashback on groceries for the Blue Preferred I will be a cardholder… I make a few hundred dollars of this every year, and this is after the annual fee..
It does suck that Costco is ending its partnership with AMEX. In our case I simply won’t renew my Costco membership.
I’ve been to many stores that say “We do accept American Express”. The swipe fee must eat too much into profits.
I believe Costco makes up something like 20% of amex’s sales volume. If that is true, the difference in sales volume between discover and amex is in large part due to the soon to be ending association between amex and Costco
Personally I can’t wait until Costco changes away from American express. It’s the only place I use the card and will cancel the amex once the association is over. As opposed to other posters on here, American express is the only customer service with which I’ve had a bad experience. I’m also looking to thin out my wallet which means the amex would be the first casualty since it’s not very well accepted (half the stores don’t accept them and the ones that do don’t really want to take it -I’m assuming due to high fees).