American Express has sent me a good offer on points I could use for travel.
I’m just wondering if their card is accepted as readily as Visa and Mastercard at most businesses.
My impressions on this may be dated, but since AmEx does a lot of their business with business clients holding corporate cards, it tends to be well accepted at business-oriented institutions like airlines, hotels, and restaurants. It’s also accepted at many stores and other large locations, but not to the same extent as VISA and MC, largely because of higher merchant fees, except where they may have cut a special deal, like they once did with Costco, though it’s no longer valid.
OTOH, many VISA and MC issuers are aggressively offering a variety of different points and cash-back cards that may provide as good a deal or better than what AmEx is offering you, so it’s at least worth a look around.
My impression of the hierarchy of places is:
[ul]
[li]“We don’t take credit cards”[/li][li]“We take Visa and MasterCard”[/li][li]“We take Visa, MasterCard, and American Express”[/li][li]“We take Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover”[/li][/ul]
Basically, if a place accepts credit cards at all, they accept Visa and MasterCard, but Amex is not a given. Amex bills itself as a jet-setter/corporate card, and is taken by establishments that mean to be seen as “high end”. Airline tickets, car rentals, probably. Your corner mini-mart, probably not.
Just last night I was at a fine restaurant in Montreal with a friend and, when he tried to pay with AMEX, they refused it. They did take his Visa and my MC. Just one data point.
Strangely enough, I was able to use my Amex more universally while living in Europe than while living in Alaska. Seems like almost nobody in Alaska accepts it. In Europe, even the toll toads accepted it.
I would switch the last two (rather I would switch AmEx and Discover in them). I find Discover as ubiquitously accepted as Visa and MC. AmEx is a ‘premium’ card. Yearly fees never end, they expect you to pay off your balance each month, but they give you a lot of high end ‘perks’ if you use it a lot. I got one because I figured using one might help improve my credit rate faster. My credit rating did increase steadily, but I can’t be sure if it was worth the $90/year it cost…
Bolding added by me. I believe this is no longer true for all Amex cards. They still have the charge card product, which they expect you to pay off each month, but they also have credit cards, on which you can maintain a balance.
Edited to add, they also have no annual fee products as well.
Just my rough guess of AmEx acceptance after having a card for an awfully long time: I would say that it is accepted at 90-95% of places I go to today. When I first got an AmEx, I’d say it was probably closer to 80%.
YMMV.
I have never had my Visa not be accepted by a place that accepted credit cards at all. I recently obtained my first AmEx card (because they offered a great deal on frequent flyer miles) and found that a number of places that accepted Visa would not take my AmEx. (This is in Panama.)
Well clearly that’s because Europe is more “high end” than Alaska. 
I have an AmEx that was originally my student starter card, back when they were all annual fee/pay off each month cards. Eventually I got other cards and decided that the annual fee wasn’t worth it. When I tried to cancel, they offered to switch the card into a no annual fee regular credit card. I still have that card, although I don’t use it very often because I don’t carry credit cards.
Are there any places that accept Amex but not Visa or Mastercard?
I used to have a Gold American Express card because it was convenient - I didn’t have to carry much cash but it wasn’t a credit card. Mind you in those days it wasn’t so easy to pay by debit card either. Anyhow it started to become a too regular event that places didn’t accept Amex and I gave it up.
I just recalled that the final straw was a holiday in New Zealand where basically it seemed that no-one accepted it. I had planned to use it all trip and had to fool around to get funds from my Australian bank.
Until quite recently, Costco.
The problem is I have used all the sign up bonuses from both Visa and MC. AmEx is offering 50,000 points if I sign my business up and they waive the $175 (!) yearly fee the first year. One has to put $5000 on the card during the first 3 months to qualify, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I plan to “spend” the points on an air ticket and cancel the card before next year when the yearly fee kicks in.
They’ve had a credit card product for at least 20 years. I had Amex Optima in 1996 when I was traveling through Europe. Pretty sure it was fee-less, too.
In my experience, I pay one fee for the pleasure of accepting Visa, MC and Discover at my business. I pay an extra $7.95 a month for the pleasure of accepting AmEx. This split makes it easy to know how much the ability to take AmEx means to me.
Internationally Amex is useless except for very high end hotels and airlines as others have said. My own personal experience is Australia, UK, Japan, Thailand, very very few places take Amex (I mean places which do accept Visa or Mastercard).
IME, AmEx is not accepted everywhere. In particular, I have a lot of trouble using it in Europe, which is unfortunate, since it is our company card. I often end up having to use personal cards (Visa or MC) or cash and then have to explain the situation to accounting.
Giving you a company AMEX is a very bad idea if you have to travel to Europe or Asia for work. At the very least they should give you a company MC or Visa as well as an AMEX.
AMEX seems to be withdrawing outside of N America IMO.
The third major one you see is China’s UnionPay.