American Express is building AI-powered commerce capabilities, launching developer tools and purchase protection for AI agent transactions, while posting strong first-quarter results of $18.9 billion（約3兆円） in revenue and $4.28 per share. The company is using its closed-loop payments data to improve fraud detection and payment security as AI agents increasingly handle digital commerce, putting it in direct competition with Mastercard and Visa, both of which are rapidly expanding their own AI payment security features.
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American Express unveiled the Amex Agentic Commerce Experiences Developer Kit to let developers integrate its cards into AI-powered transactions, and introduced Amex Agent Purchase Protection—an industry-first feature protecting purchases made by registered AI agents. The company posted first-quarter revenues of $18.9 billion（約3兆円） (up 11% year over year) and earnings per share of $4.28 (up 18%), reaffirming full-year 2026 EPS guidance of $17.30–$17.90.
Why it matters
AmEx is positioning itself for a shift toward AI-handled digital transactions by leveraging its closed-loop payments platform—which gives it end-to-end transaction data—to verify purchase intent, improve payment approvals, and strengthen fraud protection. This could deepen merchant relationships and strengthen customer engagement as AI handles a larger share of digital transactions.
What to watch
Mastercard recently expanded its Agent Pay platform and introduced Verifiable Intent to support secure AI-driven transactions, while Visa launched the Visa Threat Intelligence Platform (VTIP) to identify cyber threats before they become payment fraud—signaling intense competition in AI-powered payment security.
American Express is moving aggressively into AI-enabled commerce at a moment when the payments industry is shifting toward transactions initiated and managed by AI agents rather than direct human buyers. The company's closed-loop platform—which gives it visibility into the full transaction lifecycle from cardholder to merchant—is a structural advantage: it can use that end-to-end data to catch fraud and verify legitimacy in ways open-network competitors cannot easily replicate. The launch of the Developer Kit and Agent Purchase Protection is thus not merely a feature release; it is a statement that AmEx intends to embed itself into the AI commerce layer itself, so that when an AI agent makes a purchase, AmEx's card and fraud logic are native to that flow.
The strong Q1 results—11% revenue growth and 18% EPS growth—provide financial cover for this shift and signal confidence in the investment case. AmEx is explicitly signaling that technology spending will remain elevated while maintaining full-year 2026 EPS guidance, a signal that management believes the AI push will drive long-term value without sacrificing near-term returns.
However, AmEx is not alone in this space. Mastercard's expansion of Agent Pay and introduction of Verifiable Intent, combined with Visa's VTIP threat-detection platform, show that the two larger networks are also racing to build trust and security for AI-driven transactions. The competitive dynamic suggests that over the next 1–2 years, payment security and AI agent integration will become table-stakes features rather than differentiators—making AmEx's early moves important, but not necessarily decisive.
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