AmEx launches its own restaurant reservation service... fresh after acquiring Resy
2 people. 7:30pm. The table staring at the chef... That kind of service used to require a fancy AmEx concierge. But in 2020, AmEx will launch reservation-booking in its app across 10K restaurants for Platinum and Centurion members. Sound like Resy? It is. AmEx bought the trendy-ish reservation app in May. Resy's app still exists separately, but its tech will also power this initiative.
Keep your butt comfortably seated in AmEx's app... Keeping your loyalty is what drove all of this. Dining is the top request of AmEx concierges, and daily AmEx app usage jumped 35% from last year. So AmEx wants its app to be more of a pampered destination — and its other Resy-like acquisitions lately help that:
- Pocket Concierge: A Japanese startup acquired in January to get you reservations at Michelin-starred restaurants with 14-month waitlists and paycheck-consuming prix fixe menus.
- Cake: A British startup acquired in 2017 to make it way easier to pay for that meal without the awkward "waiter-we-need-the-check-please" handwave.
We're looking for the right case study here... and we think it's Match. The dating app technically competes with other dating apps. But Match Group owns just about all of them — 45 other dating apps, from Tinder and Hinge to OurTime and Plenty Of Fish. Whether you book a dinner res in AmEx's app or on Resy, you're still swimming in AmEx's ecosystem.