AMERICAN EXPRESS BANK
150+ Years of Reinvention and Customer Service

The story of American Express is a fascinating one, filled with interesting and sometimes quirky characters who -- through a combination of brains, perseverance and luck -- shaped the company's development during the past century and a half.

The express company that forwarded freight and valuables evolved into a company that created and sold financial products like money orders and travelers cheques. Following an era of international expansion, the company became an entity perhaps best known for its charge card. Today, American Express is a global payments company.

The attributes that today are the hallmarks of the American Express brand -- trust, integrity, security, quality, customer service -- all have their roots in this compelling story. In this history, as well, are the genesis and development of the company's aspiration to become the world's most respected service brand.

EXPRESSMEN JOIN FORCES
Established in 1850 in New York, American Express Company was among the first and most successful express delivery businesses to arise during the rapid westward expansion of the United States. The U.S. Postal Service at the time was slow, expensive and nonexistent in many areas. Nothing larger than a letter-sized envelope could be sent by mail, and certainly nothing valuable, as a fair number of deliveries were lost or stolen enroute.

The express companies served as a lifeline to the growing nation. Intrepid expressmen, typically on horseback or driving stagecoaches, traversed from the eastern cities to the western frontier, transporting correspondence, parcels, freight, gold and currency, among countless other goods. American Express quickly earned a reputation as the best in the fledgling industry – the company that delivered, literally.

Although in its early years American Express was not itself a financial services company, its largest and most consistent clients were banks. Delivering the banks’ typically small parcels – stock certificates, notes, currency and other financial instruments – was considerably more profitable than transporting larger freight. Soon the company would scale down its parcel and freight delivery business in favor of creating and selling its own financial products.

Countesy: AMEX