Amex

Specific information about the payment method American Express.

American Express (Amex) is an American multinational financial services company. Founded in 1850, the company is best known for its credit card, charge card and traveler's check businesses. While the US is its most important market, American Express operates worldwide, similarly to Visa or MasterCard and can be used for purchases at the point of sale or online.

Online merchants willing to accept American Express must use the American Express online service. The end-customer selects the American Express button or logo for these online payments and enters the card details to complete the purchase. The following card details are required for Amex:

  • Full name
  • Card number
  • Expiration date
  • CID identification number (which is on the back of the card)

American Express offers the SafeKey 3D Secure product to accept online payments to protect their card sales and verify the identity of the cardholder in a similar way to Visa and MasterCard.

In the unlikely event that chargebacks occur, American Express offers a SafeKey service to verify the cardholder during the online purchase to allow merchants to protect their card sales.

Payment

If a shopper of your webshop chooses to pay with Amex, he will initially need to provide his card details. Upon confirming his card details, Accounting as a Service will redirect him to 3DSx for 2 Factor Authentication.

Amex as well as Accounting as a Service support payments via authorisation/capture as a standard but you may also choose payments via debit/capture depending on your PSP. The related configuration is part of the onboarding procedure and can be found in the technical application. If you have already been onboarded, please contact us or send us your request for configuration change.

In case you need help or advice, please contact us.

Note: If you choose this payment method, your merchant will also need to have a contract with an acquirer where payment guarantees and/or seller protection is defined.

Settlement

The settlement for Amex payments follows the standard technical PSP model in Accounting as a Service.

Refund

In case of a refund to be handled as part of a return, you should follow our use case Return creation to trigger the refund procedure in Accounting as a Service. Alternatively, if the refund happens in the context of a goodwill procedure, please follow the use case Good will creation for triggering a goodwill credit within Accounting as a Service.

Disputes & Chargeback

Consumers can issue chargebacks. In this case the acquirer will forward a chargeback request to the merchant, who can then try to avoid the chargeback by proving the transaction e.g. by providing an invoice copy and a proof of delivery or proof of usage. Nevertheless some chargebacks can usually not be avoided. In this case the acquirer will debit the chargeback amount in the settlement file, Accounting as a Service will book it on the debtor account and either start the dunning flow (if configured) or write-off the chargeback and correct the VAT for the merchant. There is a notification to inform merchants about chargebacks to enable them to e.g. block services or customer accounts

Please note that managing/defending dispute & chargebacks is part of Accounting as a Service's communication related service and can be enabled and configured during your onboarding as part of the technical application).

See also