Amex Adds 6 lac Merchants in India

American Express 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.

 

Anurag Gupta, Vice President & Head, Global Merchant Services, American Express, said that 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, they have enabled Amex Card acceptance in many new categories to displace cash spend. They are targeting sectors such as Government Payments, Education, and Health Care, to provide their Cardmembers even more places to use their cards and do business with more merchants, he said. 

 

Major new categories signed up by American Express in India, the world’s largest card issuer by purchase volume and the largest integrated payments platform, 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 that their focus is on driving acceptance across spend categories. They now have significant coverage across large E-Commerce merchants and partner with almost all major online payment gateways and aggregators. To enable their Cardmembers to use their card at retail locations, they are also actively deploying signage and innovative point of purchase displays. To deliver strong value to both Cardmembers and merchants, they 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, he said.

 

Anurag added that their commitment to meaningful value and best-in-class experience is the core of their proposition for merchant partners as they connect them to their high spending Cardmember base. They’ve also made investments in their fraud-prevention capabilities to back their 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 the 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

More than 20,000 new 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

More than 60,000 new 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.