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The places where I can't use my American Express have been almost non-existent. One or two mom and pop restaurants were Visa only, but that is about it. Almost
by X-Istence 12y ago
The places where I can't use my American Express have been almost non-existent. One or two mom and pop restaurants were Visa only, but that is about it.
Almost all of my monthly spending is on my American Express.
- vhost- 12y agoThat's not my experience. I have to use an Amex card for work to make IT purchases all the time and I'd say a good 25 to 30% of the places I try to use Amex at don't except it.
- X-Istence 12y agoI am a normal consumer, I have never used American Express for business purposes. 25 - 30% seems really high though, considering American Express used to be targeted mainly towards business users...
- toomuchtodo 12y agoI've found several SaaS sites that only take Visa and Mastercard, but not Discover or American Express.
- ingenium 12y agoAgreed, I make almost all my purchases with my Amex card (mostly because of unlimited 2% cash back on everything). It's usually smaller independent restaurants that don't take American Express. It's something that I never really understood, because American Express in my experience charges lower transaction fees than Visa/Mastercard. When I had an Amex merchant account they charged a flat $7/month fee with no per-transaction fees, though our volume wasn't very high. However, you have to setup the American Express account separately, which probably has a lot to do with why many mom and pop type restaurants don't take it. But now that a lot of new restaurants seem to be using processors like Square, this is a complete non-issue.
- X-Istence 12y agoYes, Square is definitely helping solve some of the issues for places like that. I shop at farmers markets quite a bit, and a lot of the merchants there are using Square, and it is awesome =)