The news: American Express recapped its 2025 highlights and laid out plans for agentic commerce readiness in its 2026 shareholder letter.

• Amex notched $72 billion in revenues, up 10% YoY.
• It acquired 12.5 million proprietary cards globally, and over 70% of new accounts were on fee-carrying products.
• And roughly 65% of all new account acquisitions are millennials and Gen Zers; the average age of US Platinum and Gold cardholders is now 33 and 29, respectively.

Amex’s perceived agentic advantages: CEO Stephen Squeri believes Amex is  particularly adaptable to agentic commerce.

• Membership model. Amex is betting on embedding its lifestyle and business assets into AI platforms and building its own AI infrastructure to ensure quality AI service for its cardholders.
• Closed loop network. Amex has the advantage of control over its relationship with cardholders and merchants alike, with only Capital One boasting the same ability among major card networks. As agentic commerce scales, Amex envisions its richer insights into members’ preferences can drive more spending, loyalty, and retention with AI personalization.
• History of trust. One of the biggest roadblocks to agentic commerce adoption is a lack of consumer trust. Squeri believes that Amex’s brand reputation of trustworthiness can help ease more cardholders into trying out AI shopping.

Zooming out: Beyond leaning on its legacy brand as a trustworthy provider, Amex is planning to launch significant updates in 2026 to position itself for coming agentic payment volume.

• Amex is working on the American Express Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACES) developer kit, which lets select partners integrate Amex payment capabilities into agentic platforms.
• Amex’s membership assets, like Resy’s restaurant inventory and booking, Offers’ search and enrollment, and the Amex Travel App’s hotel search and booking will be baked into select AI platforms for members’ access.
• And Amex plans to build its own AI solutions across its app for users who begin their search journey there.

Implications for payment providers: Businesses are preparing for agentic commerce to be the future of payments, but consumer buy-in right now is low. 

OpenAI had to wheel back ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout due to lack of consumer engagement. Preparing tiered AI-backed experiences like discovery phases for travel and hotel booking before hard launching fully autonomous checkout can help consumers adjust to changing ways of making a purchase with gradual exposure to agentic technology.