30 CASE 2 American Express: Bank 2.0 A New Mission in Enterprise Growth In June 2011, Kenneth Chenault, CEO of American Express (AXP), announced the formation of a new group within the compsny, Enterprise Growth (EG), to drive expansion into digital and mabil payments. "New technologies are rede‘ining the payments business and creating opportunities that go beyond our exist ing businesses,” sais Chenault in a press release, “The Enterprise Growth group is designed to extend our leadership into the world of alternative payments and create new fee-based revenue streams for the post: recession environment.” To lead the group, AXP hired Dan Schulman from Sprint Corporation (where he had hheaded the Prepaid Group after previously serving as founding CEO of Virgin Mobile USA, as president and CEO of Priceline.com Incorporated, and in other lead ership positions). “Technology [is] fundamentally going to change the way you might think about financial ser vices? Schulman said during one of his first meetings with EG, “just asthe Internet has redefined one indus- try afier another” EG, he continued, was designed “to challenge existing business models” and “to think about the intersection between software, software pat forms, mobile apps, mobile technology in general, and financial services” For Alpesh Chokshi and Wesley Wright, this was the moment they had been waiting for. Both of them had been at AXP since 2001 and had worked in its pre~ paid business since 2005. When EG was formed, their {group had moved into EG with a mandate to drive expansion beyond AXPS traditional credit and charge business on a global basis. Chokshi was the president land Wright led product development. Before moving into EG, together with their team they had driven the expansion of AXPS prepaid business into gift cards and reloadable cards. Now, with the support of Chenault and Schulman, they saw an opportunity to do some- thing bigger—to move AXP into debit and checking Pe, spending, a large sector of payments in whi financial perfor nave” and Exhibits 2 through performance ave «the US. cards busines) yt team had beg 0 he initiative Bank nya ing the applicatios ! chology to usher in iteration” of bark = As the team foci on this opportunity, Choy ned the cones 6 sone of his colleagues mg . The team we ber of questions team had "gone to s*! « nced good answers toa num wood mews was that the Ee 1 with regard to the potent opportunity in Bani: 0. The team was well aware of the magnitude of the ial market that was ea rently underserved by ‘raditional banking serves the United States, estimates were that more than os. in four households (25.3%) were either unbankede: uunderbanked’ and conducting some or all of thie financial transactions outside of the mainstream batk ing system.* Even as FG's initial research had gleaned some promising indicators, there was still much tht needed to be worked out. The Closed-Loop Network [AXP cards were accepted at fewer merchants than Vis ‘or MasterCard, One reason was a perception thit AXP transactions were more costly to the retailer of mecha, due in part to different business models, fees, and po Ing structures for processing transactions. In the Visa and MasterCard business models, xe nal banks and financial institutions owned the ration ship withthe cardholder (in the vernacular of creitczt bbusiness models, these were called issuers) Ise provided cards to their customers that bore a Visit MasterCard logo, and set the interest rate and ay ‘on the loans the cards would deliver. When the ct holder bought a meal ata restaurant, a transition mt ‘work sent the amount of the purchase to the restau “This: asecae wes prepare by ke Thora Kenny. Rescach Asst, ude the superion of Gregory Fh E Tha alo “Assit Profesor of Business Adminstration. was writen sa bss fr cls dacsion rather Than ona ete ont tang ‘Miminsratve stustn, Coptight ©2014 bythe Univer of Vira Duden Shea Foundation Chaat Va Al swe To oP {os vend on ema salesdardenbsiespalishing om. No put fs publtan ray repodae, red ns evel pte wed “rtrd any orm or ban means~letrone, mechan hospi, rnin a terse he pmo he Di Fudan