Companies Owned by American Express (2026)

What companies does American Express actually own?

American Express is best known as a card network, but over the past several years it has quietly built a portfolio of owned technology and lifestyle brands, mostly clustered around dining, travel, and small-business finance. The clearest examples are the restaurant-reservation platform Resy, acquired in 2019, and the reservations-and-events platform Tock, acquired in 2024. Both are genuine Amex-owned businesses, not partnerships or licensing deals, and the company has publicly described plans to bring the two platforms closer together.

Alongside those, American Express acquired Rooam, a mobile-payments middleware company, in 2024 to strengthen its restaurant-technology stack. On the small-business side, it acquired the technology, products, and team from Kabbage in 2020 — the cash-flow and lending capability now sits inside what Amex markets as American Express Business Blueprint. Earlier, in 2018-2019, it picked up a cluster of travel and dining apps: Mezi (a travel assistant), Cake Technologies (a UK dining-payments app), LoungeBuddy (an airport-lounge booking app), and Pocket Concierge (a Japanese restaurant reservation platform). Several of these were absorbed into Resy or the broader Amex Travel and dining experience rather than kept as standalone consumer brands, so we describe them as acquired rather than as independent products you can still download today.

It helps to group these by purpose, because that is how a corporate development team thinks about a portfolio. The dining cluster — Resy, Tock, Rooam, and the older Cake Technologies and Pocket Concierge apps — exists to give cardholders better access to restaurants and to give Amex a foothold in the technology restaurants use every day. The travel cluster — Mezi and LoungeBuddy — was about smoothing the trip itself, from planning to the airport lounge. The small-business cluster — the Kabbage technology behind American Express Business Blueprint — is about lending and cash-flow tools for the merchants and small companies that already carry Amex cards. Each acquisition slots into a strategy rather than sitting at random.

The thread running through all of these is the same one that runs through a Delaware LLC: a large company holds each business as a separate legal unit so it can buy, build, ring-fence, and potentially sell each one cleanly. When Amex acquired Resy, it did not pour the reservation platform into the parent and lose its identity; it kept it as a distinct business with its own brand, its own team, and its own contracts. That separation is what lets a parent run dozens of businesses without one failure dragging down the rest. It is exactly the logic a single founder can borrow, just at a smaller scale — and the legal tool that makes it possible is the same kind of entity, the LLC or corporation, whether you are American Express or one person with a laptop.

Which banking and operating subsidiaries does American Express run?

Beyond the acquired tech brands, American Express operates several wholly owned banking and operating subsidiaries that most people never see. American Express National Bank is its direct-to-consumer bank, offering high-yield savings, certificates of deposit, and business banking tools — a large, regulated institution holding hundreds of billions of dollars in assets. American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc. is the parent's principal operating subsidiary, and American Express Bank, FSB is another regulated banking entity within the group.

The company also runs the Centurion Lounge network — the airport lounges available to certain Platinum and Centurion cardholders — as a business it owns and operates directly, rather than a third-party lounge it merely buys access to. These are not flashy consumer brands, but they are the genuine owned entities that make the card business work, and they illustrate how a single parent can sit on top of many separately chartered companies.

There is a useful detail in the structure worth noticing. American Express National Bank is not a sibling sitting directly under the parent at random; regulated banking entities are slotted into the group in a deliberate order, and American Express Travel Related Services Company has historically been the direct parent of American Express Bank, FSB. In other words, the group is a tree, not a flat list: a top holding company, then operating subsidiaries, then their own subsidiaries beneath. That layering is precisely what lets a large organization isolate risk, satisfy different regulators, and keep each business legally distinct.

For a small founder, the equivalent move is holding your operating business, your intellectual property, and perhaps a future second product line in distinct entities. You will not need a banking charter or a tree of subsidiaries on day one — most founders run a single LLC for years — but the option to add structure later is built in. Many founders start with one Delaware LLC formation and add a second entity only when a real reason appears: a separate product they plan to sell, a partner who wants their own stake, or a brand worth ring-fencing. That is the same instinct that drove Amex to layer subsidiaries onto its parent over time, scaled down to one person's roadmap.

Is American Express itself a Delaware company?

This is the most common myth about American Express, and it is worth correcting plainly: American Express Company, the publicly traded parent, is incorporated in New York, and has been since 1965. It is not a Delaware corporation. If you have read that "Amex is a Delaware giant," that statement is inaccurate for the parent entity.

The more accurate Delaware connection lives lower in the structure. Like most large financial groups, American Express uses Delaware entities for specific purposes — its receivables-financing vehicles, for instance, have included Delaware-organized companies such as American Express Receivables Financing Corporation IV LLC. Delaware is a natural home for financing and special-purpose subsidiaries because of its predictable statutes and its specialized business court. We hedge the precise details here because these structures shift with every securitization program and reorganization, and an exact entity list changes year to year.

The takeaway is simple. You do not need the parent to be a Delaware company to see Delaware at work inside a multinational — and you do not need to be a multinational to use the same Delaware LLC vehicle yourself. The Delaware LLC for non-residents path puts that structure within reach of a founder anywhere in the world.

What brands are confused as owned by American Express but are NOT?

A surprising amount of what people assume Amex owns, it does not. The biggest one is the payment networks: Visa, Mastercard, and Discover are separate, independent, publicly traded companies and direct competitors. American Express runs its own closed-loop network, which is exactly why it gets lumped in with them, but there is no ownership in any direction. Diners Club, another name often grouped with Amex, is owned by Discover Financial Services.

The second big one is travel. American Express Global Business Travel — the corporate travel company now publicly traded as GBTG — carries the Amex name but is not an Amex-owned subsidiary. American Express spun that business out in 2014 into a joint venture and today holds only a minority interest while licensing the brand. So a company wearing the American Express name is not automatically a company American Express owns.

We list only what we could confirm from public announcements and filings. Where an item once belonged to American Express but has since been sold — Accertify, the fraud-prevention platform carved out to private-equity firm Accel-KKR with the deal completing in 2024, is the clearest case — we mark it as formerly owned rather than current. Ownership is a moving target: companies buy, sell, spin off, and rename businesses constantly, and a list that was accurate two years ago can be wrong today. That same discipline matters when you structure your own company. Be precise about what your entity actually owns, keep your operating agreement and cap records current, and do not describe a partnership or a licensing deal as ownership — the distinction is exactly the one that trips people up when they assume Amex owns Visa or GBT.

Why do large companies hold brands inside Delaware subsidiaries?

When a company like American Express acquires Resy or Tock, it almost never merges the new brand directly into the parent's balance sheet on day one. Instead, the acquired business typically lives inside its own legal entity, and a large share of US operating and financing entities are organized in Delaware. There are concrete reasons for this. Delaware's General Corporation Law and its LLC Act are flexible and well-tested, its Court of Chancery decides business disputes without juries and with deep precedent, and the state's filing machinery is fast and routine.

The structural benefit is ring-fencing. If each business line sits in its own Delaware entity, a problem in one unit is contained within that unit rather than spreading across the whole group, and a successful unit can be sold by transferring the entity rather than untangling assets. That is the same limited-liability logic that makes a Delaware LLC attractive to one founder: the company is a separate legal person, and your personal assets sit on the other side of that wall when the company is run properly. None of this is legal advice — the protection depends on real-world habits — but it is the reason the structure is so widely used at every scale.

There is also a practical, unglamorous reason large companies favor Delaware: predictability of process. Filings are handled the same way every time, the Division of Corporations is built for high volume, and counsel across the country already knows how Delaware entities behave. When a corporate team needs to stand up a new subsidiary to hold an acquisition like Tock, doing it in Delaware means fewer surprises and faster execution. A founder feels the same benefit in miniature: a Delaware LLC is a known quantity to US banks, payment processors, and the suppliers or platforms you will deal with, which removes friction at exactly the moments — opening an account, signing a contract — where an unfamiliar entity type can cause delay.

You can read the deeper history of why so many large entities cluster in the state on our Delaware LLC overview, and the founder-level mechanics on our how it works page.

How does a founder copy the American Express subsidiary playbook?

The version a solo founder can run is straightforward: form a Delaware LLC, place your brand and revenue inside it, and treat the LLC as a real, separate company rather than an extension of yourself. The mechanics are the same ones a corporate team follows when it stands up a new subsidiary, minus the lawyers and the board approvals. You file a Certificate of Formation, get a federal tax ID, open banking in the entity's name, and keep the company's money and contracts separate from your personal ones.

For a founder outside the United States, the route is designed to work without a US presence. You do not need an SSN, a visa, or a US address. The EIN comes from the IRS via Form SS-4 for a Delaware LLC, processed by fax or mail for non-resident applicants, which is why it takes longer than the formation itself. After that, US banking and payments open up.

• Formation. The Certificate of Formation is filed with Delaware and your LLC legally exists in about 48 hours.
• EIN. The IRS issues your number in roughly 2 to 4 weeks without an SSN — the slowest step in the sequence.
• Banking. With the EIN, a US business account is usually approved within 1 to 5 business days, though approval is the bank's decision.
• Operations. Brand, contracts, and revenue all sit inside the LLC, exactly the way a parent company holds a subsidiary.

The single most important habit, and the one that actually delivers the ring-fencing benefit, is keeping the company genuinely separate from you. A large company would never run a subsidiary's money through an executive's personal checking account, and you should not run your LLC's money through your personal account either. Pay yourself deliberately, sign contracts in the company's name, and keep clean records. That discipline is what turns the legal shell into real protection — and it costs nothing beyond attention. The Delaware filing gives you the structure; how you operate the company is what makes the structure mean something.

How do banking and payments work for a small Delaware LLC?

American Express runs its own bank; you will instead link your Delaware LLC to an existing US business bank account. Once your EIN is issued, US fintech banks open business accounts for non-residents entirely online, with Mercury, Relay, and Wise being common choices. None require a US visit. Approval is always the bank's decision, so a specialist helps you apply to more than one provider until at least one account is live. Our Delaware LLC banking guide walks through the options in detail.

If you sell online, you will likely also want to accept card payments the way Amex's merchant customers do. A Stripe account for a Delaware LLC is the usual path, and like banking, Stripe approval is the provider's decision and is never guaranteed — we help you present a clean, consistent application rather than promise an outcome. The fastest way to get declined is a mismatch: a name on your ID that does not match the LLC name, an address that differs across documents, or an account opened before the EIN has finished processing. Keeping every detail identical across your formation document, your EIN letter, your bank application, and your Stripe profile removes most of the avoidable friction. If one provider declines, another may approve, because each reviews independently — a no from one is not a no from all.

One practical reminder on payment reporting that catches founders out: the US 1099-K threshold is now more than $20,000 and more than 200 transactions in a year. The 2025 law (the OBBBA) repealed the much lower figure that had been planned, so do not budget around the outdated $600 number you may still see quoted in older articles, and ignore other figures like $5,000 that floated around during the transition. The current rule is the $20,000-and-200-transactions test. This is a reporting threshold, not a tax line, but knowing it keeps you from making decisions on bad numbers.

What taxes and filings does a Delaware LLC owner face?

The compliance load for a small Delaware LLC is light compared with a multinational's, but it is real and it is worth knowing up front. The constant state obligation is the Delaware franchise tax: a flat $300 per year for an LLC, due June 1, starting in the LLC's second year. Miss it and Delaware adds a $200 penalty plus 1.5% interest per month, and the LLC loses good standing. Importantly, the "authorized shares" and "assumed par value" franchise-tax methods you may read about apply only to Delaware corporations, never to LLCs — an LLC simply pays the flat $300. Our Delaware franchise tax page covers this in full.

On the federal side, a single-member LLC is treated as a pass-through by default, so the company itself does not pay income tax and profit flows to the owner. Whether a non-resident owner owes US income tax is fact-specific and worth confirming with a CPA. One filing most foreign owners must not miss is Form 5472: a foreign-owned single-member Delaware LLC must file it each year with a pro-forma Form 1120, reporting transactions between the owner and the company. The penalty for not filing is $25,000 under IRC 6038A, and it is due April 15 (extendable with Form 7004). The broader picture is on our Delaware LLC taxes overview.

It is worth dwelling on the corporation-versus-LLC distinction here because it is the single most common franchise-tax confusion, and it is exactly the kind of error an article like this should kill rather than repeat. A Delaware corporation calculates its franchise tax using one of two formulas — the authorized-shares method or the assumed-par-value-capital method — and a large corporation with many authorized shares can owe a substantial amount. An American Express-style corporation lives in that world. A Delaware LLC does not. An LLC owes a flat $300, with no share math involved, because an LLC has no shares to count. If you read a franchise-tax guide that talks about authorized shares in the context of your LLC, it is mixing up the two entity types and you can disregard it. Knowing which world you are in saves both money and panic each June.

One more compliance area rounds out the tax picture. Large companies have whole departments for ownership reporting; a founder just needs to know roughly where things stand. Beneficial-ownership reporting under the Corporate Transparency Act has changed significantly and remains in flux. In March 2025, FinCEN issued an interim final rule that removed beneficial-ownership reporting obligations for US-formed domestic reporting companies. Under that rule, only certain foreign reporting companies registered to do business in the US remain in scope, and US-formed entities are currently treated as exempt.

Because this area is still evolving, do not treat any summary — including this one — as final, and do not rely on old deadlines you may see quoted from before the 2025 change. Confirm the current FinCEN status at the source or with a professional before relying on your filing position. We flag changes to the founders we work with, but the duty to file if required rests with the owner.

How does the founder cost compare with what you might expect?

You will not be paying corporate-acquisition prices to copy the structure. Our service is a single flat fee of $397, and the Delaware state filing fee is already included — there is no separate state charge bolted on at checkout. That one payment covers the Certificate of Formation, the EIN application, a registered agent for year one, your operating agreement, and US bank and Stripe application support.

From year two, the main ongoing cost is the flat $300 franchise tax plus about $99 to renew your registered agent. There is no Delaware annual report for an LLC, so the franchise tax is the whole state obligation. For the full picture, see our Delaware LLC cost breakdown.

When would a founder use a Delaware C-Corp instead, like big companies do?

American Express is a corporation, and so are most large public companies, for reasons that mostly do not apply to a single founder starting out. If your goal is to raise venture capital, issue stock options, or eventually go public, a Delaware C-Corp is usually the structure investors expect, because it supports multiple share classes and a clean equity table. The trade-off is heavier compliance: a C-Corp owes an annual report and a franchise tax calculated by methods that do not apply to LLCs.

For most founders — especially non-residents running an e-commerce store, a SaaS product, an agency, or a holding entity for a brand — the LLC is the cleaner default, and you can convert to a corporation later if a funding round requires it. The point of looking at how American Express structures itself is not to mimic a hundred-billion-dollar bank, but to see that the underlying tools — separate entities, ring-fenced liability, Delaware as the home for many of them — scale all the way down to one person and a single LLC.

Many of these companies chose Delaware for the same reasons founders do today — the Court of Chancery, flexible LLC statutes, and strong privacy protections. Form your Delaware LLC for $397, all-inclusive, in 48 hours. Form your Delaware LLC → | Read the complete Delaware LLC guide →