The company is one of the world's largest travel agencies, but it is better known for its charge cards and revolving credit cards.

The company still issues traveler's checks and publishes such magazines as Food & Wine and Travel & Leisure through its American Express Publishing unit.

Its travel agency operations have more than 2,200 locations worldwide and its Travelers Cheque Group is the world's largest issuer of traveler's checks (it also issues gift cards). But the company's charge and credit cards are its bread and butter; American Express has more than 92 million cards in circulation worldwide.

Established in 1850 in New York, American Express Company was among the first and most successful express delivery businesses to arise during the rapid westward expansion of the United States.

American Express earns about half of its revenue from merchants, charging them a discount rate for each transaction processed. The other major source of revenue is cardholders themselves, who pay annual fees and interest charges on balances. Because AmEx is one of the leading issuers of corporate credit cards, its customers, on average, spend up to 2-4 times as much as its competitors'; in 2007, the average AmEx cardholder spent $12,106 per year, not including cards issued by affiliates. This allows American Express to charge a discount rate over twice as high as either of its main competitors (an average of 2.56% in 2007). This combination of higher discount rates and big-spending cardholders means that American Express earns much more per swipe than either Visa or Mastercard (MA).

On November 10, 2008, American Express was approved by the US Federal Reserve to become a bank holding company. This would make the company eligible for a capital infusion under the $700B recovery plan, and on November 12, 2008, it requested a $3.5B capital infusion from the US Government.

The company rang up over $31 billion in revenue in 2007 based on over $647 billion in total customer transactions.

The current CEO and Chairman of American Express is Kenneth Chenault.

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