- See nearby offers from merchants based on your phones location. AmEx has been a leader among the credit card companies in creating offers.
- If a charge is flagged by AmEx fraud systems as suspicious, the network could send a real-time alert to the users registered phone number. The user could then enter a PIN to verify the transaction. Or, the transaction could automatically be verified by determining that the phone is in the same location as the merchant. This would help alleviate the pain of false positives in fraud alerts, increasing legitimate transactions, decrease fraud, and decrease customer service calls. Even in the current implementation, simply knowing that a transaction was attempted in Fiji while youre in Chicago helps to identify fraud.
- Real-time reviews. Once someone has dined at a restaurant and paid, the transaction alert could be used to solicit a review. This would allow AmEx to create a very powerful competitor to Yelp that avoids two of the biggest data problems with Yelp: it ensures that only verified customers can review a business, and it should increase the volume of data collected by closing the loop and soliciting feedback. (Disclosure: I am short $YELP.) As Ive written before, transaction data makes AmEx the king of checkins.
- Real-time redemption of Membership Rewards points, AmExs loyalty program. When a transaction occurs, the notification could offer consumers the option to pay with points instead of with cash.
- Transaction review data for the blind. The real-time transaction information could be spoken to blind customers, allowing them to verify the transaction amount that was authorized and resolve any issues while they are still at a business instead of after the fact.
