Role
Stephen J. Squeri is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of American Express and also serves as CEO of American Express National Bank.
He became Chairman and CEO in 2018 after a career at American Express spanning more than four decades. [S8]
That tenure matters because he did not arrive as an outside turnaround executive.
He understood the company's technology, operations, commercial business, global services and internal culture before taking the top job.
The Business He Inherited
Squeri inherited a company with a strong premium brand and global network but several strategic challenges.
American Express had already narrowed around payments after earlier decades of diversification.
It had also recently absorbed the loss of the Costco U.S. cobrand relationship.
The key question was whether Amex could rebuild growth without abandoning the premium economics that made it different.
The answer under Squeri was not to become a mass-market card issuer.
It was to invest more aggressively in Membership value.
Framework for Winning
American Express describes the Framework for Winning as the strategic roadmap it has used since 2018. [S5]
The core logic is consistent:
- attract premium customers;
- deepen engagement;
- strengthen merchant coverage;
- grow partners;
- invest in colleagues and technology;
- refresh products;
- maintain credit discipline.
The company is therefore not trying to optimize one metric in isolation.
It is trying to strengthen several loops at once.
The Fee Strategy
Net card fees reached almost $10 billion in 2025. [S1]
This is one of the clearest changes in the modern American Express model.
A larger share of the customer base is willing to pay for Membership directly.
The strategy is not simply:
raise annual fee
↓
collect more revenueIt is closer to:
increase Membership value
↓
refresh product
↓
charge fee
↓
retain engaged customers
↓
grow spend / relationshipA fee without product value increases cancellations.
A richer product can justify a higher fee if customers actually use and value the benefits.
Younger Customers
Squeri's team has repeatedly emphasized Millennial and Gen Z acquisition.
This addresses a fundamental strategic risk.
Premium brands can age with their customers if younger consumers see them as outdated.
American Express argues that younger customers are among its fastest-growing cohorts.
The implication is that premium Membership is being repositioned around experiences, dining, digital servicing, travel and mobile discovery rather than only traditional status signaling.
Merchant Acceptance
Another major objective of the Squeri era has been closing the acceptance gap.
American Express historically suffered from a common objection:
“I like the card, but I cannot use it everywhere.”
The company reached virtual U.S. acceptance parity and continued expanding internationally.
By July 2026 it estimated more than 190 million merchant locations worldwide. [S9]
This matters because wider acceptance allows a premium card to capture more ordinary, everyday spend.
Travel and Dining Assets
Squeri's era also changed the meaning of travel and dining benefits.
American Express acquired LoungeBuddy and Resy in 2019.
It acquired Tock in 2024.
It continued expanding Fine Hotels + Resorts, lounges and digital travel tools.
The result is a move away from:
card issuer
that buys perkstoward:
Membership platform
with proprietary access + booking surfacesAmex increasingly owns or controls pieces of the customer journey before payment occurs.
Commercial Expansion
On the business side, American Express has been broadening beyond cards.
The Kabbage acquisition added digital small-business cash-flow capabilities.
The Center acquisition added expense-management software.
The company also offers checking, non-card lending and B2B payment products.
This creates a second major expansion axis:
own more of the business customer's financial workflow.
Technology Background
Squeri previously served as American Express's Chief Information Officer.
That background is relevant because modern payments are software systems.
Card issuance, fraud, underwriting, rewards, service, merchant acceptance, offers and travel all depend on technology.
His leadership era has combined product investment with platform modernization rather than treating technology as a back-office utility.
AI Strategy
In 2026 American Express made agentic commerce a visible strategic priority.
Management expects AI agents to discover products, choose services, book restaurants, book travel, manage business expenses and complete payments.
The company introduced the ACE developer kit and began making Membership assets more compatible with AI interfaces. [S28]
This extends the same strategic principle:
make Amex valuable wherever the customer's commerce decision happens.
Capital Allocation
The company has maintained significant capital returns while investing in growth.
In 2025 it returned $7.6 billion to shareholders through dividends and repurchases. [S5]
At the same time it invested in premium product refreshes, merchant acceptance, dining acquisitions, commercial software, technology, marketing and customer rewards.
Premium Membership is expensive to build.
The model must generate enough returns to fund its own differentiation.
Credit Discipline
Growth in lending can increase net interest income.
But American Express has consistently paired growth messaging with credit-quality messaging.
That is not accidental.
A premium issuer can destroy value quickly if acquisition quality deteriorates.
The strategy depends on:
grow customers
+
grow spending
+
grow lending
WITHOUT
losing underwriting disciplineBusiness Before Squeri
Before 2018, American Express was already a focused global payments company.
But several elements were less developed:
- acceptance still carried more friction;
- dining was mainly a benefit category rather than owned software;
- small-business cash-flow tools were narrower;
- premium product fees had not yet expanded as aggressively;
- AI-driven commerce was not a strategic category.
Business After Eight Years of Squeri
By 2026, the company looked more like:
PAYMENTS + LENDING
+ PREMIUM MEMBERSHIP
+ GLOBAL MERCHANT NETWORK
+ TRAVEL
+ DINING SOFTWARE / INVENTORY
+ BUSINESS FINANCIAL TOOLS
+ AI-COMPATIBLE COMMERCE ASSETSThe card still matters.
But the card increasingly acts as the identifier and payment layer inside a much broader Membership system.
What Worked
Several strategic choices appear to have worked through the research cutoff:
- sustained card-fee growth;
- strong premium product acquisition;
- younger customer engagement;
- widening merchant acceptance;
- resilient credit performance;
- continued billed-business growth;
- differentiated travel and dining assets.
These outcomes do not prove that every benefit or acquisition creates value.
They show that the overall Membership strategy has produced durable growth.
What Remains Unproven
The newer parts of the strategy remain less mature.
These include:
- AI agent distribution;
- deeper commercial software integration;
- the long-term economics of owning dining platforms;
- whether benefit complexity eventually reduces premium-product satisfaction.
These should be described as strategic directions, not as already-proven success.
Leadership Style in Business Terms
The important description is not personality.
It is operating style.
Squeri's model can be summarized as:
protect premium positioning
↓
invest in differentiated assets
↓
refresh products
↓
expand acceptance
↓
increase customer engagement
↓
reinvestWhat Most People Miss
The Squeri strategy is often reduced to expensive cards and more credits.
That misses the system.
The deeper strategy is to increase the number of situations in which Membership matters:
- paying;
- borrowing;
- traveling;
- dining;
- booking;
- receiving an offer;
- running a business;
- interacting through AI.
The annual fee is a consequence of that strategy, not the strategy itself.