Word: amexco
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...American Express has been left at the starting gate. The financial and travel conglomerate has made offers for Philadelphia Life Insurance Co., Walt Disney Productions and Book-of-the-Month Club, only to be turned down or outbid. It has also sounded out others but received a polite no. Amexco's young, aggressive management is not about to give up. Faced with heating competition for its dominance of credit cards and traveler's checks, the company is looking for profitable new uses for its money. That hoard is so huge-$4.4 billion in cash and securities, plus...
...Amexco denied that it did any such thing, but last week it agreed to an out-of-court settlement. It will send notices to its 87,000 merchant-customers within the next 60 days that they may, if they wish, offer discounts to people who pay cash. To Consumers Union, the settle ment is "a tremendous victory." To American Express, it is merely "a clarification of existing policy...
...real question is whether merchants will choose to give cash customers the discount. They cannot grant discounts only to those customers who ask; under Amexco's new rules, a merchant who offers discounts must offer them "clearly and conspicuously" to everybody. Some may do that -if enough people request it. But many will not, since such two-tier pricing will surely cause bookkeeping headaches. In either case, the new discount is not likely to discourage Amexco's 5 million cardholders, mostly business and professional men and women who travel and entertain a lot. To them, the card provides...
Holders. Travel may no longer be Amexco's biggest business, but-along with related services like checks and credit cards-it is the fastest-growing sideline. In a single weekend last year some 9,000 U.S. travelers left for Europe on American Express package tours. Amexco has also made 9,000 bookings to bring foreign tourists into the U.S. this year, triple the number in 1972. The American Express credit card gained a million new holders last year, increasing its membership to 5,000,000, partly by signing up such U.S. department stores as Macy's and Bonwit...
Bank credit cards, particularly Master Charge and Bank Americard (30 million holders each), do offer stiff competition to the Money Card. And Space Bank, Amexco's computerized hotel-reservation service, has lost money consistently since it was started in 1969. But these problems are minor annoyances to the executives who have made the American Express name synonymous with the U.S. presence abroad. One perverse sign of the company's world prestige: when students surged through Zurich streets to protest the Viet Nam settlement last winter they ignored the U.S. consulate and all other American establishments in the city...