Why American Express Doesn’t Fear an Agentic AI Shop-ocalypse

Is American Express, described as a victim of the “Ghost GDP” apocalypse in the viral Citrini report on AI’s hypothetical economic fallout, the ultimate doomsday play? 

In his annual letter to shareholders published Wednesday, AmEx CEO Stephen Squeri promised the company can thrive in the now-arriving and likely disruptive age of agentic artificial intelligence commerce. Better yet, Squeri says strong fundamentals and a banner 2025 couldn’t have placed the company in a better position at the dawn of the new era.

It’s Business, and It’s Personal

Squeri touted the continued appeal of fee-based membership cards for both business and personal users. On Wednesday, AmEx also launched a refreshed version of its Graphite cash-back card for businesses. The company said that certain business cardholders will receive a new perk: a $300 credit toward ChatGPT Business subscriptions.

On the personal side, AmEx’s Platinum rewards cards remain a boon for business. Net card fee revenue has now grown by double digits for 30 consecutive quarters, reaching a record $10 billion last year, the CEO wrote. A full 70% of the 12.5 million new credit card accounts opened last year were for fee-paying products, with Gen Z, millennial and international clients driving the growth. 

In other words, the only thing standing in the way of AI commerce agents ushering in a stablecoin-based future that destabilizes the credit card ecosystem as we know it, as theorized by Citrini, is the little dopamine rush millennials get when they book a “free” flight to Bali.

AmEx, however, says it’s elbowing its way into a key seat at the table in the agentic future:

• In the letter, Squeri announced that the company would launch its American Express Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) developer kit next month, enabling select partners to “seamlessly integrate our payment capabilities into their agentic experiences.”
• Meanwhile, the company is working to make its many membership perks, such as hotel or restaurant bookings, “discoverable” and “actionable” by AI agents. If you feel like you know how to game the points system, wait and see what your AI shopping agent can do.

Checked Out: “It’s going to be a bit of a journey” before we arrive at that eventual future, Squeri said in an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday, noting how most users will still ultimately give a final sign-off on any AI-driven transaction. Recent hiccups in the AI commerce ecosystem back him up. For instance, OpenAI this month began to sunset ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout feature, which it launched in September with retail partners including Walmart and Shopify. Instant Checkout largely failed to attract users, and analysts told CNBC that OpenAI underestimated the difficulty of completing transactions. So, sure, agentic shopping may be the future of commerce. Then again, everyone said the same thing about Alexa when Amazon first launched the home-pod assistant a decade ago.