Thread: PayPal Competitor- American Express 'Serve'.

American Express has announced a new service called 'Serve' that will be a competitor to PayPal.

Source(TechCrunch): After Visa, American Express Takes On PayPal With Digital Payments Platform


Excerpts from source:

The platform is available immediately to anyone in the U.S. and is expected to launch into other international markets over the coming year.

can be funded from a bank account, debit, credit or charge card, or by receiving money from another Serve account.

American Express has released mobile applications for iOS and Android. Serve accounts can also be accessed through Facebook.

in the first six months Serve will charge no fees to open an account. After that period, it will cost 2.9% + 30c/per load to put money into Serve accounts

What do you guys think??

Prob the first of many to enter the [person->person] market similar to PayPal xfers....I'm sure they'll add another .3 charge or three

Serve is only available to U.S. consumers at this time.

The ability to create sub-accounts is an interesting feature and looks like this is a feature that allows you to make ATM cash withdrawals for $2.

Sounds good, though I do wonder if Amex will charge a fee just to have a Serve account. If I recall their credit card charges a fee just to have it could be wrong though...

I hope it replicates all good things which PayPal #1 and then goes one(or two steps ahead. Charing for opening accounts, if they do, will not be received well outside US. Posing a hurdle at the door makes it tough for customers to enter.

This looks good, especially the sub-account creation. We can only wait and see how it turns out for the rest of the world. Becoming the most used payment platform is a little far-fetched for Serve IMO, but we never know.

I will just add AMEX to the long list of paypal killers that will not kill paypal.

It sounds like they will initially be competitive with PayPal. However, EVERYTHING that American Express does is more costly than alternatives. For their credit cards They charge a merchant a higher percentage per transaction than any other credit card and they still cling to the outdated concept of charging an annual fee to card holders. Based upon their history, I am skeptical about this service remaining competitively priced. This will go on my "we will see" list.

I also do not see anything that will kill PayPal.