American Express has historically focused on building their own products but the firm is now open to more partnerships to help keep up with the pace of innovation; Amex Digital Labs is responsible for driving new products and partnerships to further the organization’s digital strategy; Amex Digital Labs makes minority stakes in startups so they can explore use cases for technology, and potentially look to acquire the startups; “Five or 10 years ago, as a company, we were all about getting people to use credit cards more,” Luke Gebb, Head of Amex Digital Labs, said to Business Insider. “But now, we’re really recognizing — and this is one of the core areas of my team’s work — all the types of payments that our customers want to make that may or may not be on credit card rails,” Gebb added; the company has recently moved into non-card payments, like peer-to-peer and QR codes to pay. Business Insider.
