> ..Kabbage, a leading financial technology company providing cash flow management solutions to small businesses in the U.S.
> American Express will acquire Kabbage’s team and its full suite of financial technology products, data platform and IP built for small businesses.
> Kabbage’s products include access to flexible lines of credit, online bill payment, cash flow visualization tools, e-gift certificates, and the ability to centralize funds through the company’s recently launched business checking account
> This product suite is integrated into a single online platform that uses real-time data processing to help small businesses better understand, forecast and manage their cash flow.
For context, the small business lending tech space is about dead now. OnDeck and Kabbage were the two frontrunners, valued at billions in past years. Their valuations plumetted over the last few years and Covid put a nail in the coffin. OnDeck just sold for $90m, Kabbage undisclosed.
I’m guessing it’s the looming threat of defaults. Most small-medium businesses are restaurants, hair salons, high street shops, and other places heavily impacted by covid.
It seems like Kabbage specifically targets loans to online businesses, which are booming right now. Even still, it seems the decline predates the pandemic.
AMEX already has enough loan risk on its books that it tends to correlate up and down moves with DFS rather than V and MC, it makes sense they wouldn’t want more.
I'm not sure if I understood you correctly, so I apologize if I misunderstood.
I would expect American Express--a lending bank--to track more closely with Discover Financial--also a lending bank--rather than Visa or MasterCard, which are card network operators. Visa and MasterCard don't write the actual lines of credit issued to customers; the card-issuing financial institutions (Bank of America, Chase, Your Local Credit Union[tm], and so on) do and the latter carry the loan risk.
American Express and Discover also happen to operate their own card networks and issue card-accessed loans on them. You can get an American Express network card from other banks (like Wells Fargo and Bank of America) and you used to be able to get Discover network cards from other banks but I can't think of a non-debit one off the top of my head at the moment.
From their 10-Q: "Square Capital, which has historically been a significant component of the subscriptions and
services revenue, suspended facilitating loans to sellers in the second quarter of 2020, other than PPP loans."
This makes me curious how lending club and prosper are doing right now. Does anyone have loans they’ve extended on the platforms who is willing to say if they’re seeing a rise in missed payments?
A lot of small businesses in Europe and the Middle East don’t accept Amex, due to the transaction fees. I understand that they’re interested in maintaining a luxurious image, but it just means I drive my finances elsewhere with these businesses by using MasterCard. I hope they will increase the card’s outreach
Amex has been competitive with Visa/Master for the past couple years, but haven't been able to shake off the stigma that the processing fees are more expensive, since it is up to the actual business to accept Amex.
> But in 2018, Mastercard and Visa credit had a swipe fee weighted average of 2.26%, while AmEx had 2.3%, additional data from The Nilson Report found. [0]
In the past Amex has been prohibitively expensive to accept, and relied on their status as a luxury brand to get people to accept them. I think the playing field is starting to reach an equilibrium across payment network providers.
> I understand that they’re interested in maintaining a luxurious image
They give you a lot of value back compared to other cards I've tried in Europe. I don't know it's something as flippant as 'luxurious image' - people use them because when they are accepted and you're buying something expensive like corporate flights and hotels, you can earn an a significant amount of value back. I flew transatlantic first-class a few times completely free on my AmEx. My Visas give me so little I don't even bother checking what the current total is.
It's free money to you (the actual cost is amortised across all consumers and it's there if you use you card or not) so might as well take as much as they'll give you.
The whole idea that a particular card gives you monetary value is completely foreign to most Europeans I know ( I am European myself ). The only value perceived is the ability to pay in the first place.
From the perspective in NL, with its ubiquitous PIN and iDeal system ( online PIN ), it seems like a totally unnecessary tax on economic transactions. The rates are not comparable ( a couple to maybe 20 cents per transaction ).
I think there is a couple reasons why creditcards are not popular in Europe. They don't like buying on credit ( even less so in DE vs NL I guess ). The cards only got widespread in the 90s. We have our own systems.
If I had a physical shop, I would probably decline AmEx purchases. In the shops which do accept them, expect them to hate you for it.
I happen to travel very little and know almost all shopkeepers who I buy groceries from / shop with ( including at my supermarket ).
I get more value from being loved.
edit: Now I think about it, a history with severe inflation might have to do something with the EU attitude too.
If you are an individualist maybe you are right. I think the Germans are more aware of the Tragedy of the Commons.
Personally I do not like the hyper-individualist, credit-laden neoliberal economic system which is slowly creeping into the EU. Targetting the individual with ever more convenience and more-for-less.
Finally, cash is untraceable and therefore of vital importance to me and free societies.
Merchants don't accept them because of their high merchant fees, but AmEx don't have high merchant fees for some flippant reason like to create a 'luxurious image' - they do it to create value for their card holders.
Yup, point remains. It’s an externality masquerading as a luxury.
It’s also arguably regressive, since the beneficiaries of those rewards tend to be overwhelmingly rich, while the inflated prices are paid for by everybody else.
Yup, point remains. Cash back cards maintain the same characteristics.
Traditional cash back cards are arguably less regressive since it isn’t just the wealthy that have cash back cards. In theory, a broader set of people are beneficiaries of a system that a broad set of consumers pay into via higher prices.
AmEx cards OTOH are expensive enough to process that there still exists a broad set of merchants who refuse to process them. For those that do process them, it’s harder to say to what degree the costs are passed on to all buyers. And unlike cashback cards, Amex rewards beneficiaries heavily skew rich.
I am not sure how well this strategy will work out in the long run. Personally I look forward to replace my Amex card with Apple’s card, once available for me. Here in Thailand many shops, hotels don’t accept Amex, so it’s harder to save up points for benefits, effectively reducing the value of the card.
Over the last 5 years I have had the same acceptance rate of AMEX in Europe and I've had in the US.
As in, the same distribution of restaurants accept them, or more obviously the same distribution of places that told me they didn't accept it.
Its not a quantitative analysis, but one user experience. I am aware AMEX did a big push for more acceptance, my point is that I think it worked, and public perception is just lagging behind.
Even in the US you'll still often find places where it's not accepted.
Now that Chase offers an equivalent high annual fee, high rewards luxury card as Amex but it's on the Visa network, I don't see why anyone still uses Amex.
Amex fan here. Their support is top notch, and their suite of cards gives me best typical rewards. 4x on grocery/restaurant, 5x on travel, etc. And those cash out at 1.25, so it's really more like 6x on grocery.
> American Express will acquire Kabbage’s team and its full suite of financial technology products, data platform and IP built for small businesses.
> Kabbage’s products include access to flexible lines of credit, online bill payment, cash flow visualization tools, e-gift certificates, and the ability to centralize funds through the company’s recently launched business checking account
> This product suite is integrated into a single online platform that uses real-time data processing to help small businesses better understand, forecast and manage their cash flow.