Pocket Concierge, founded in 2011, gives users the ability to search and book restaurant reservations in more than 800 restaurants across Japan. With the acquisition of the platform, American Express intends to provide its Japanese card members with additional access to reservations.

“Our card members love to dine out, so we are always exploring ways to provide them with greater access to reservations across the globe,” said Chris Cracchiolo, SVP of global loyalty and benefits at American Express. “Pocket Concierge’s reservation platform and extensive relationships with top Japanese restaurants provide us with a great opportunity to continue to enhance and expand upon the dining access we provide to our Card Members across the globe.”

At least for the time being, Pocket Concierge will continue to prove all existing services to its current customers and restaurant partners.

“It is a great pleasure to work with American Express, a company which has great relationships with restaurants all around the globe,” said Kei Tokado, founder and CEO of Pocket Concierge.

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The deal means US Amex card members will be able to use their Membership Rewards points for purchases at PayPal merchants online, send money via Venmo or PayPal via the Amex mobile app, easily add American Express cards to their PayPal wall from the Amex app or website, use the PayPal Instant Transfer feature to pay American Express bills with PayPal or Venmo, and more clearly identify their specific American Express cards in the PayPal wallet.

“This partnership is the product of our companies’ strong commitment to create innovative payment experiences that utilise both organisations’ core assets, including the ability for customers to pay with American Express Membership Rewards points and the integration of peer-to-peer payments into the Amex app,” said Dan Schulman, President and CEO, PayPal.

As a result of the partnership, PayPal will integrate into the American Express Token Service, alongside continuing the pair’s global card acceptance relationship. The new features will be implemented over the course of 2019.

“Together we will streamline and expand the online and mobile payments experience for our card members, helping us become a more essential part of their digital lives,” said Stephen J. Squeri, chairman and CEO at American Express. “This strategic partnership with PayPal will open up the use of Membership Rewards points at more small and medium-sized businesses than ever and make peer-to-peer payments more seamless for card members.”

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The move comes after American Express support was added to Android Pay in Canada last month.

The support covers all American Express accounts, except for pre-paid cards, corporate purchasing cards, and virtual accounts.

Before this launch, American Express cards could only be used on Android phones through its own Amex app – something which, based on reviews on the Play Store, proved unpopular with its customers.

The top reviews on the Play Store describe Amex Pay as “useless and buggy” and “a poor relation to Android Pay“.

Don’t forget to enter the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards. The Early Bird deadline for submissions is 22 July. More details here.

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The new ‘Uber Rides with Platinum’ benefit provides AMEX platinum members with up to $200 in annual Uber credits for rides within the US, along with Uber VIP status where available. Card members will receive $15 in Uber credit per month, with an additional $20 bonus in December, when their AMEX platinum card is added as a payment method in the Uber app. The benefit will become available to card members started 30 March 2017.

“This premium, first-of-its-kind benefit gives platinum card members another reason to use Uber – a reliable, safe way to travel in 450 plus cities around the world,” said Emil Michael, CBO at Uber. “We’re excited to continue to expand our longstanding partnership with American Express to provide even more card members with valuable rewards and VIP treatment when they ride with Uber.”

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Each retailer was scored on 75 mobile ranking factors, covering aspects such as personalised content, in-app customer support and the inclusion of clearly-labelled security certificates. A percentage score was awarded to each company based on performance against the criteria with a total of 810 points available.

American Express received the highest scores, benefiting from a responsive design, intuitive interface and TouchID security login. The company was followed by The AA in second place, Hargreaves Lansdown in third, PayPal (fourth) and Barclaycard (fifth).

GoCompare ranked as the highest scoring mobile website across both the UK and US, but despite the quality of its responsive site, the company lost out in the overall benchmark due to a lack of mobile and tablet apps. UK brands that scored poorly include LSE, MoneySavingExpert and CreditExpert. Overall, the mobile experience scores were lower for the financial sector than they were in Episerver’s cross-market retail benchmark, launched in November 2015.

“For traditional bricks and mortar retailers, a mobile-first approach has generally been welcomed with open arms,” said Episerver CMO, James Norwood. “Within the financial services sector however, the move is much more challenging. Given the complex nature of financial purchasing decisions, as well as the significant values involved, many financial retailers have struggled to convert their services into a mobile-friendly format. At the same time, customer security concerns have traditionally slowed the adoption of mobile banking and financial servicing apps.

“The top-performing retailers in our financial services benchmark have demonstrated their ability to address these concerns, maintaining an intuitive interface while still managing to incorporate the very latest security features. As these technologies evolve and customers become more open to managing their finances on the go, these businesses have the opportunity to plant their flag early in the mobile finance marketplace.”
You can download the full report here.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the company is aiming to boost business growth by using emerging technology to appeal to niche segments like heavy mobile users keen to use digital wallets, or those with low credit ratings who traditionally avoid larger financial firms.

As the payments and banking sector is increasingly disrupted by innovative solutions utilising mobile, larger companies such as American Express have found themselves forced to embrace the latest mobile technology or risk being quickly left behind in new markets.

Among the technologies currently being investigated by the company is facial recognition, which would be used to capture and authenticate user identity on mobile devices as an alternative to user names and passwords.

The company has already worked with Wal-Mart to develop a prepaid, reloadable card system called Bluebird, and designed and launched a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payment system called Serve that aims to increase its presence in the digital payments world.

The firms Enterprise Growth group utilises a lab of developers and designers who work with devices like the Apple Watch and Google Glass, seeking ways to adapt its existing services to new devices and channels, using prototypes and mock-ups to test feasibility. “We want to do the minimum amount of work to demonstrate whether a leap of faith to full development is worth taking,” said Neal Sample, president of the Enterprise Growth group.

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Bookatable has partnered with American Express to develop the technology, which will initially be deployed to 119 restaurants participating in this years London Restaurant Festival, which runs 8 – 27 October. Among the London-based restaurants offering Festival Menus are OXO Tower, STK London, Ping Pong and Villandry.

The beacons send exclusive messages promoting the participating restaurants, including offers and menus, when diners who have downloaded the Bookatable enter a beacon hotspot, which are positioned near restaurant entrances and have a range of up to 50 metres.

“These notifications will offer diners convenient access to the restaurants booking page to encourage more people to dine at restaurants participating in the festival,” said Nick Brown, head of consumer product at Bookatable. “iBeacon have already proved to be hugely successful with companies such as John Lewis, Waitrose, EasyJet and Virgin Atlantic all using the tecnology to successfully reach their customers.

“Following the festival, we hope to increase the number of restaurants using iBeacons in the UK, enabling customers to enjoy more on-the-go access to great dining experiences.”

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The new iPhone is rumoured to finally include NFC technology which has become commonplace on Android phones, and when combined with the fingerprint scanner which debuted on the iPhone 5s, it could create a fast and secure payment system for consumers.

The news of the partnership with Visa and Mastercard was reported on Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the situation. In a seperate report, Re/code claimed that American Express will also be partnering with Apple, giving it an extremely strong network of payment partners to support this move into a new area.

In order to truly break into the mobile payments sphere, Apple will also require agreements with retailers to facilitate the technology. However, given the popularity of the iPhone and the support of major payments companies, it is likely retail brands will be queuing up to support any innovation Apple unveils on 9 September.

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