Part
01
of one
Part
01
AMEX Market Share Audit
Key Takeaways
- The market share of American Express in Switzerland, England, Turkey, Italy, and Belgium, is 20.78%, 1%, 1%, 1%, and 4%, respectively.
- The number of cards issued per country for American Express in Switzerland, England, Turkey, Italy, and Belgium is 1.5 million; 7.77 million; 698,258; 270,772; and 243,847, respectively.
- According to American Express's annual reports and Visa and MasterCard rules, American Express performs all clearing in-house globally through clearinghouse and settlement systems.
Intro
Details of our findings have been provided in the attached custom Google spreadsheet and calculations have been provided below.
Calculations
- Market share was calculated by taking the number of cards or revenue for American Express in each country and dividing that by the total market of the country in the number of cards or in USD according to what was publicly available. Each market share compares only directly related metrics of the same year i.e. Switzerland calculations use the market in terms of total cards in 2019 and the number of cards the company issued in 2019.
- Total cards issued per country were calculated using the countries' precompiled market share and the total cards in the market i.e. England held 1% of the market in 2019 with 776.63 million cards issued in the country in 2019.
- Switzerland:
- Market Share: 1,500,000 cards/7,218,251 cards=0.2078
- England:
- Total Cards: 776,630,000*0.01=7,766,300
- Turkey:
- Total Cards: 69,825,826*0.01=698,258
- Italy:
- Total Cards: 27,077,186*0.01=270,772
- Belgium:
Research Strategy
For this research on American Express's market share, we leveraged the most reputable sources of information that were available in the public domain, including Statista, Market Watch, Allied Market Research, GlobeNewswire, PRNewswire, American Express Annual Reports, and others. Details of calculations have been included above. For each country, we analyzed the company annual reports, local markets, and expert reports. Through this search, we hoped to find the actual calculated market share per country based on revenue or cards issued. Unfortunately, not all countries provided these details publicly, however, we were able to find the market share per country through market reports.
We found that American Express has a small market share in the European region which is not listed as a significant share of revenue in the annual reports for the company. The company lists European revenues with Middle Eastern revenues for a total of 8.55% of the total company revenue in 2020. There is no breakdown by country. Due to these findings, we were unable to use revenue as a metric for calculations. In addition, not all countries provided details publicly about the number of cards issued or in circulation annually. Countries that did not provide any publicly available metrics for calculation include Austria, Latvia, and Bulgaria.