Agrawal: AmEx is "King of Check-Ins," and "Could Own Local"

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VentureBeat’s Rocky Agrawal says American Express’ position as a payment network and card issuer give it the potential to be a dominating force in the growing local commerce niche.

“Last month, AmEx collected 60 data points on me from my transactions. If you view everyone of those as a check in, you realize how powerful that is. Very few companies have as much data on me,” he writes. “And other credit card networks like Visa and MasterCard don’t own the relationship with the card holders — Citibank, Chase, Bank of America and other issuers do — so the data is spread thin.”

The payment giant has to hope more of its cardholders feel the same way as Agrawal about its potential as a recommendation engine: “I would love to see AmEx use all of its data and algorithms to help me make decisions on where to spend my money,” he writes.

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