Dear Fellow Shareholders,
2025 was an excellent year for American Express. Propelled
by our loyal customers, our global network of merchants and
partners, and our talented colleagues, we delivered some of
the best financial results in our long history, building on the
strong growth we have sustained since introducing our long-
term growth aspirations in 2022.
Our consistently strong performance has been powered by
our Framework for Winning, a strategic roadmap we have had
in place since 2018 that lays out our vision, our key business
imperatives, and what we need to do to win. We continuously
refine and update the Framework as the environment
changes, pivoting as needed to take advantage of emerging
opportunities.
As we look ahead, artificial intelligence's potential to
transform commerce is one of those opportunities. We
are embarking on an era in which Al-powered agents
can discover products and services, make decisions,
and complete transactions on behalf of consumers and
businesses – from booking travel and making dinner
reservations to replenishing business inventories, managing
expenses, and completing payments autonomously.
American Express is entering this next phase
of commerce from a position of strength.
Our business is driven by the value we create through our differentiated Membership Model, with
a wide range of benefits, services, and experiences we strategically invest in to enrich the value we
offer our Card Members and merchants. The Model is powered by our global, closed-loop network
which gives us rich, first-party data that enables personalization, best-in-class fraud protections,
our no pre-set spending limit capability, and much more.
All of this is underpinned by our dedicated colleagues and our global, premium customer base that
is unmatched in the industry.
The strength of our customer base and the effectiveness
of our strategy of continually enhancing the value
of Membership were clearly evident in our strong
performance in 2025.
For the year, we delivered record revenues of $72 billion,
up 10 percent year-over-year, and EPS of $15.38, up
15 percent, excluding the prior-year gain. Spending
on American Express Cards increased 7 percent on an
FX-adjusted basis²; net card fee revenues grew double
digits for the 30th consecutive quarter to reach a record
$10 billion for the year; and our credit performance
continued to be excellent and best-in-class.
As it has been for many years, International was our
fastest growing business segment, with 13 percent FX-
adjusted spend growth in 2025.² In fact, our business
outside the U.S. is now approximately 50 percent larger
by spend than it was three years ago, with FX-adjusted
billings growth in the double-digits for 19 consecutive
quarters², and we see a long runway for continued growth.
Demand for our premium Card products remained
strong globally as we added 12.5 million new proprietary
cards, with over 70 percent of new accounts acquired
on fee-paying products. Millennial and Gen Z consumers
remained our fastest growing cohort, representing
approximately 65 percent of new consumer account
acquisitions globally, and are now contributing the
largest share of consumer spending in the U.S. Our
premium value propositions resonate particularly
well with younger consumers, with approximately 75
percent of new U.S. Consumer Gold and Platinum
account acquisitions coming from Millennial and Gen Z
customers. In fact, the average age of new customers we
acquired on the U.S. Consumer Platinum Card® and Gold
Card in 2025 was 33 and 29, respectively.
Customer acquisition was supported by our product refreshes in close to a dozen countries around
the world, including the highly successful launch of our updated U.S. Consumer and Business
Platinum Cards in September. The new Platinum Cards have exceeded our expectations, driving
strong demand and engagement with our new benefits. A key component of the products' value
propositions is the partnerships we have with over 20 leading brands with whom we co-create
benefits that add even more value to Amex® Membership.
In addition to the partner benefits embedded on our Cards, we are continuing to deepen and
expand our cobrand partnerships. In 2025, we renewed and expanded our relationships with
key international cobrand partners, including British Airways, ANA, and Air France-KLM, and we
introduced new partnerships with fintechs like Coinbase, which launched its first credit card, the
Coinbase One Card, on the American Express network.
We're also using the power of partnerships to enhance our Membership assets and capabilities. In
dining, we built on our 2024 acquisitions of Tock® and Rooam® with the announcement of a multi-
year partnership with Toast to create more personalized hospitality experiences across the Resy®,
Tock, and Toast restaurant networks.
Within Commercial Services, in addition to refreshing our flagship U.S. Business Platinum
Card®, we acquired Center, an expense management software platform. We also created and
just announced a bold roadmap for expanding our B2B offerings for businesses of all sizes. This
roadmap includes a robust pipeline of new products and integrated business solutions planned
for 2026, representing the most significant expansion of our commercial portfolio in a single year
in our recent history.
Finally, we continued to expand our coverage globally to give our Card
Members more places to engage with us, reaching over 170 million
merchant locations worldwide that accept American Express as of
year-end 2025. We maintained virtual parity coverage in the U.S.“, and
merchant locations outside the U.S. have more than doubled over the
last four years. Looking ahead, as Amex acceptance continues to grow
around the world, we expect to gain a larger share of our Card Members'
wallets starting from the beginning of their relationship with us.
Our continued momentum gives us the financial strength to invest in
our business, while providing strong capital returns to our shareholders.
In 2025, we delivered $7.6 billion to our shareholders through dividends
and share buybacks. Building on our track record of increasing capital
returns, we announced an approximately 16 percent increase to our
quarterly common stock dividend, beginning with the first-quarter 2026
dividend declaration.
These results continued the momentum we've generated in recent years
by successfully executing our long-term strategy. Over the last three
years, we have driven average revenue growth of 11 percent per year and
mid-teens EPS growth, while delivering strong shareholder returns.
A new era of commerce is emerging
The Al landscape is rapidly evolving. A shift from generative Al tools that inform decisions to Al-
enabled agents that can act autonomously on behalf of consumers and businesses represents
one of the most significant changes in how people can discover and pay for goods, services, and
experiences since the advent of e-commerce.
As in prior shifts, certain fundamentals will endure, and in many cases become even more
important. While agentic commerce can speed the discovery and transaction process, it will
also add new layers of complexity and risk. This makes managing identity, authorization, fraud
risk, and liability of paramount importance for agentic commerce to be adopted broadly.
The winners in this new paradigm will go well beyond basic payment functionality by offering
differentiated value, service, and security. As Al agents become more prevalent, we believe
consumers will increasingly make their payment selections based on who they trust and who
can deliver incremental value across rewards, offers, experiences, and access. Businesses
will look to benefit from agentic applications that enable the seamless integration of supplier
payments, invoicing, expense management, and cross-border flows. And both will want their
payment providers to deliver excellent service and enable greater purchasing power, while
having their backs as they navigate new ways to transact.
Amex can deliver all of this, and more.
American Express is built for this moment
Over the years, new technologies have acted as accelerants to our business. We've seen this in the last
few decades as we capitalized on the emergence of e-commerce and mobile payments. Our customers
and our company have thrived through many great technological shifts, and we strongly believe that will
continue in an agentic age.
Why? Because the competitive strengths of our Membership Model and closed-loop network that are
driving our growth today also position us for future success in an Al-powered world.
Membership Model
For decades, we have invested in building our differentiated Membership Model that offers rich rewards,
benefits, offerings from leading partners, and access to unique experiences across an ever-expanding
array of lifestyle and business-centric assets. By embedding Amex Membership assets into Al-enabled
platforms – and building our own agentic applications across these assets we can continue to deliver
the superior value, service, and security that our Card Members and merchants expect from us, even as
transactions become more autonomous.
Closed-loop Network
Another major advantage is our closed-loop network, which gives us direct relationships with millions of
premium Card Members and merchants around the world. The data the closed loop generates gives us
rich insights into our customers' spending patterns and the services and experiences they care about.
With this deep understanding of our customers' preferences and emerging trends, we can invest in the
right areas that enhance Membership value, which in turn drives strong customer demand, engagement,
and retention, and delivers more business to our merchants. Combining our rich data and insights with
advanced Al technologies will enable us to create even more value for customers with even greater
personalization and proactive, contextual interactions, all while maintaining our commitment to our
customers' privacy preferences.
Built on Trust, Security, and Service
Importantly, we have the expertise to ensure the next evolution of commerce is not only intelligent, but trusted.
With our end-to-end view of each transaction – from the Card Member to the merchant and back we have
consistently achieved best-in-class credit and fraud rates over the years, while authorizing and underwriting
millions of real-time transactions, with average annual spending on our Cards approximately three times
that of cards on other networks. Supported by the investments we've been making in our technology and
risk capabilities, our closed-loop network positions us well to holistically manage the challenges agentic
commerce presents, enabling us to deliver intent-driven authorizations, enhanced fraud protection,
efficient dispute resolution, and strong security features to help protect our Card Members and merchants.
The powerful combination of our Membership assets and
closed-loop model makes us uniquely positioned to help shape
the next evolution of commerce.
We are actively advancing
agentic commerce
We are participating in agentic commerce today. We are currently completing Al-
assisted transactions with Al platform partners and are collaborating with leading
Al companies and industry associations to define the standards and protocols
for agentic payments. In developing our Al solutions, our goal is to ensure they
have strong security protections, consistent with our commitment to back our
customers. This proactive approach underscores our intent to build trust into an
evolving ecosystem.
As we move forward on the agentic front, our efforts are focused on three priorities:
1 We are embedding American Express payment capabilities into emerging Al
ecosystems. In April, we will publish the American Express Agentic Commerce
Experiences (ACE) developer kit, which is designed to enable select partners to
seamlessly integrate our payment capabilities into their agentic experiences.
By making it easy for partners to embed our capabilities, our aim is to play
a central role in delivering agentic transactions with the trust, security, and
differentiated value our customers expect from American Express.
2 We are making our Membership assets discoverable and actionable on
leading Al platforms. This year, we plan to enable select Al platforms to surface
and activate several of our differentiated assets, including Resy's restaurant
inventory search and booking, search and enrollment in Amex Offers®, and
hotel search, benefits, and booking capabilities through American Express
Travel. As we embed our unique assets and experiences into Al platforms, we
can ensure Membership offerings are discoverable and actionable wherever
our Card Members – and their Al agents – are making decisions.
3 We are building proprietary Al-powered experiences across our owned
platforms. In 2026, for U.S. consumers, we plan to introduce enhanced
dining discovery and booking features within the American Express app,
enable new Al-powered experiences and discovery capabilities in our Resy
and Amex Travel apps™, and pilot real-time, geolocation-based capabilities
for Amex Offers. For U.S. commercial customers, we plan to embed Al
capabilities into the suite of integrated solutions we will be launching this year
as part of our broader commercial product roadmap. This will include an Al
agent that provides deep spending insights and analysis, and an Al-powered
expense app that will help automate expense reporting for employees – from
receipt capture, to policy verification, to submission for approvals.
These and other innovations will help us deepen customer engagement,
enhance personalization, and further differentiate the Membership experience.
Al is transforming the way we operate
American Express has been a leader and innovator in embedding Al into our business to
streamline and improve our internal processes and decision making for many years. In
fact, we were one of the early adopters of Al among financial services companies, starting
with fraud prevention and detection and credit underwriting models, which has helped
drive our consistently industry-leading credit performance and fraud metrics. We are
continuing this journey by integrating Al across our business.
Advancements in Al are creating a structural shift in the way colleagues work and how
businesses operate, compete, and create value – and we are embracing it. We believe the
responsible use of Al will help us drive operating leverage, make faster, better decisions,
and enable us to deliver more seamless experiences for our customers, while upholding
the trust and security that define our brand.
We have mobilized the company around this opportunity. Over the past few years, we have
explored hundreds of Al use cases across our businesses, delivering improvements in
productivity and cycle times. And we have provided access to leading Al tools to nearly all
colleagues globally and invested in Al fluency and responsible use training. Our colleagues
have welcomed these tools enthusiastically, with strong engagement and widespread
adoption in their daily work.
Across the enterprise, we are focusing on high-impact initiatives that put Al at the center
of many of our core business processes.
Customer Service
Our travel counselors across 19 countries are using Al tools to
deliver faster, high-quality travel recommendations and insights,
and our Card servicing teams use an Al-powered chatbot to resolve
customer inquiries with more speed and greater accuracy. We are
also using Al to optimize the search capability within our mobile
app for U.S. Card Members, delivering faster, smarter responses to
approximately one million inquiries a month. And this year, we plan to
pilot conversational Al agents to update our legacy interactive voice
response systems. These agents go far beyond bots – they can follow
up, understand context, and deliver responses that feel natural and
personalized.
Marketing
We are using Al agents and other Al tools to streamline campaign
creation, enhance content development, and increase personalization.
We are also implementing Al-enabled workflows that reduce compliance
review cycle times, enabling faster speed to market while preserving
strong controls.
Technology
We have scaled Al-assisted development tools to more than 11,000
engineering professionals, reducing coding cycle time by over 30
percent, and are scaling agentic coding tools to help engineers
accelerate end-to-end software development. We are also leveraging Al
to strengthen our cyber defense capabilities and enhance the resilience
and availability of our critical platforms.
Credit & Fraud
We are using Al to leverage unstructured data to enhance our credit
insights. Building off our many years of using Al to help detect and
prevent fraudulent transactions, our Fraud teams are piloting Al
technologies to analyze customers' reports of fraud to better classify
incoming claims, which can help us reduce losses, support our
merchants, and enhance the Card Member experience.
Sales
In Commercial Services, Al tools are streamlining sales processes
and providing real-time intelligence, with the goal of significantly
improving the productivity of our sales, account development, and
digital distribution channels. For example, we are using Gen Al to
trigger real-time prospect leads, conduct pre-call research, dynamically
reprioritize prospect lists based on call analysis, and automate post-call
follow-ups. We are also migrating sales teams to a new Gen Al-powered
sales platform that converts interactions and performance data into
actionable insights.
These Al-enabled transformation efforts represent more than incremental productivity
gains. They reflect a deliberate redesign of how we operate – aligning technology, talent, risk
management, and governance – to deliver long-term efficiencies, accelerate innovation, and
extend our competitive advantages over time.
Looking ahead, our opportunity is clear
For over 175 years, American Express has thrived by delivering value that speaks to the needs and
preferences of our customers and backing them through thick and thin. We have embraced change
with confidence, focus, and an innovative spirit, transforming from our beginnings as a freight
forwarding company to today's global payments and premium lifestyle brand, while navigating
through many technological revolutions as the world around us has evolved. Through it all, we have
capitalized on the opportunities before us to become a stronger, more resilient company.
This moment is no different.
The way commerce operates will continue to evolve as new technologies emerge and customer
behavior shifts over time. In periods of structural change, companies with durable competitive
advantages, deep, enduring customer relationships and partnerships, the right talent, and
adaptable business models are best positioned to win.
We are confident that we can continue delivering strong results and create value for our
shareholders over the long term because of our powerful Membership Model, our loyal Card
Members, an incredible network of merchants and partners, and our dedicated colleagues around
the world who, guided by our Framework for Winning as our north star, make it all possible.
This is why American Express is built for this moment.
Stephen J. Squeri
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
American Express Co.
March 25, 2026