Amex Taps Gen Z Spending Surge, Builds AI-Powered Dining Platform

American Express' second-quarter earnings revealed a spending story reshaped by younger customers and artificial intelligence. Card spending rose 9% on an FX-adjusted basis, with consumer spending in the United States reaching 11% growth—its fastest rate since early 2018 excluding pandemic-distorted periods. Travel and entertainment spending climbed 10%, goods and services rose 9%, and commercial spending accelerated to 5%. Within retail, spending jumped 13%; restaurants increased 10%; airlines rose 10%; and American Express travel bookings surged 22%.

Gen Z emerged as the clear winner. Generation Z spending grew 40% year-over-year, far outpacing millennials at 14%, Generation X at 10%, and baby boomers and older customers at 5%. Together, millennials and Gen Z now account for 38% of U.S. consumer-billed business and represent 65% of new global consumer accounts opened worldwide. CEO Stephen Squeri attributed the gains not merely to new customer acquisition but to accelerating engagement. He noted that "engagement has been really accelerated, and that's driving a lot of the spending," adding that restaurant spending overall was up 10%, but "when you look at Resy restaurant spend, it's double that." CFO Christophe Le Caillec acknowledged that young customers typically enter the Amex franchise with low income, but "we're going to grow with them, and they're going to grow with us."

Amex is doubling down on dining as a strategic infrastructure. Restaurant spending is the company's largest travel and entertainment category, and Amex is building around it rather than simply collecting interchange fees at checkout. The proposed acquisition of TheFork would add 50,000 restaurants across 11 European countries to a dining portfolio that already includes Resy and Tock. Squeri described the strategy as creating "smaller closed loops inside its larger payments network by connecting cardholders directly with restaurants." These platforms also serve as acquisition channels, offering cardholders special access and benefits while remaining open to nonmembers. Amex cardholders generate higher average restaurant tickets than non-cardholders, further deepening the economics of the closed-loop model.

AI and agentic commerce are reshaping Amex's competitive positioning. Agentic commerce—transactions executed by AI agents on behalf of users—raises new questions around fraud, customer intent, and AI hallucinations. Squeri said Amex's advantage lies in having information from both sides of a transaction: "We know what the customer wanted to do, and we'll also know what the merchant delivered." This closed-loop visibility could become a moat in an era where open-loop networks like Visa and Mastercard have only partial transaction visibility. However, Squeri cautioned that agentic commerce is still immature. "We're sort of in the preseason," he said. "We're not even … in the early innings." Despite this early stage, Amex is investing in agentic commerce initiatives that were not part of the company's original 2026 technology spending plans, signaling management's conviction that the trend is material.

On the commercial side, billed business rose 5%, with U.S. small- to medium-sized businesses and large/global corporations growing at the same rate. Travel and entertainment spending among commercial customers jumped 8%, twice the 4% increase in goods and services. Amex has begun piloting a new expense management platform with middle-market customers, an area where the company faces competitive pressure from fintech providers. Revenue growth for Q2 reached 10%, below Wall Street expectations, causing shares to dip 5% in early trading Friday. Amex raised its full-year revenue growth forecast from a range of 9% to 10% to 10%.

American Express is experiencing a structural shift in its customer base: Gen Z is no longer a niche segment but has become the company's primary growth engine. The 40% year-over-year spending growth among Gen Z, compared to single-digit growth in older cohorts, reflects both new account acquisition (65% of new global consumer accounts came from millennials and Gen Z) and increased engagement. CEO Stephen Squeri emphasized that engagement—not just customer count—is driving the spending surge, citing Resy restaurant spend growing at double the overall 10% restaurant-spending increase.

This demographic transition is pushing Amex to restructure its business model around dining as a strategic category. Rather than treating restaurants as one payment category among many, the company is building a proprietary ecosystem through Resy, Tock, and the proposed TheFork acquisition. By connecting reservations, benefits, and payments, Amex is creating what Squeri called "smaller closed loops inside its larger payments network"—a strategy that serves both acquisition (offering cardholders special access and benefits) and data collection. For young customers entering with low income but high growth potential, dining engagement is a lever to deepen the relationship over time.

The company's investment in agentic commerce infrastructure signals that Amex sees AI-driven purchasing as more than a distant possibility. Squeri cautioned that the space is still in "preseason," not even "early innings," yet Amex is already spending on initiatives to support it. The closed-loop data advantage—knowing both customer intent and merchant delivery—positions Amex to address fraud and hallucination risks that open-loop payment networks (like Visa or Mastercard) cannot easily solve, potentially creating a defensible moat as agentic commerce matures.

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