American Express

Company Name: American Express

The industry American Express operates in mainly consisted the commerce of credit cards. Credit cards are used my consumers as a promise to pay back the creditors at a future date with interest. Credit card companies generate profits by charging interest and fees. American Express uses a vision statement rather than a mission statement and states, “We work hard every day to make American Express the world’s most respected service brand.”

American Express as competitors in which they contend with. Some of them include Bank of America, Capitol one, Chase, and Discover.

Some key issues in the industry of credit cards is how to manage the changes in economy. As the economy goes down it make it difficult to for people to pay back their debts. Also when in a recession interest rates are increased so, it makes it more difficult to obtain credit cards. Also, when cardholders are unable to pay, credit card companies, increase their interest rate which makes it more difficult to get back the debt. Credit card companies also have the challenge of assessing that risk of their customers before they are issued the credit cards and their activity while they have one.

There was recent article in The Wall Street Journal describing how most debtors make under $30,000 per year and don’t have college degrees. The rate of people filling for bankruptcy has been increasing every year. Now employers check credit reporting on new hires to see how they are maintaining their credit. If they have has bankruptcy they are no likely to get jobs.

This brings up a couple questions on why consumers don’t live in their means? Also do credit card companies allow Americans to not live in there means by offering service such ad credit cards.?

Work cited

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703957804575602742718377682.html?KEYWORDS=american+express

http://about.americanexpress.com/oc/whoweare/