this has not been my experience at all. i see them supported everywhere in london. and even supported in cornwall recently.

Most people in the UK live outside of London (87 % as of 2021), so I can't see how that's relevant to anything here.

For a business that targets upper middle class and HNW individuals, Greater London, the affluent parts of Southwest England, Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Northeast Scotland are all that matters.

Realistically, Amex works in most metros in the UK I've travelled in. Maybe the local kebab shop doesn't accept it, but the overlap in customer base probably isn't there anyhow.

Naive take. If the subject is money, London is always relevant.

How so? London is doing quite poor nowadays, even more so after the UK left the EU.

> London is doing quite poor nowadays

Citation needed.

It's a global financial centre and the central economic engine of the 6th biggest economy.

London's not really "the UK". It's so different from the rest of the country, it's like its own little city-state.

Small shops, cafes, restaurants, even chains in London refuse to take it.

> Small shops, cafes, restaurants, even chains in London refuse to take it

I’ve never noticed it, but I’m admittedly speedy when I travel. Maybe the high-end spots keep it while lower-end ones are walking away? Makes sense with e.g. eBay.

Support was never terribly high in the first place. It's the least preferable for merchants.

I'm in Germany and I've never seen any signs anywhere indicating Amex is accepted, only Visa, MasterCard and Meastro/GiroCard/EC/whatever.

Those signs are generally outdated. I've had cashiers tell me they don't take Amex, and when I tell them to try and run it regardless it almost always ends up working. PoS systems have evolved a lot in the last decade.

I once had a conversation with a merchant about not taking AmEx. He told me they could take it, their machine and merchant accounts were all set up, but instead of getting paid [whatever they charged] - [small percentage merchant fee] relatively quickly, they were sent a bill for AmEx fees that was almost impossible to correlate with sales. AmEx only paid them for the sales later.

AmEx are 'better' for customers because they screw the merchants over.

These days most merchants are large or small and just use Square or some POS where they don't even know what's happening so not sure this is really an issue anymore.

I've had cashiers in Germany balk at my debit card because it says "Visa" on it and tell me "we only take EC" or sometimes even "we only take EC or Maestro". The joke is of course that EC hasn't existed since 2007 (when it was renamed to "girocard") and Maestro was discontinued by MasterCard, which is why many German banks replaced Maestro debit cards with Visa debit cards.

I wouldn't rely on cashiers to know more than just whether they take debit or credit.

The EC/girocard thing is real though - those POS devices usually don't work with my American Visa - just my Deutsche Bank "EC" karte.

This has generally always been true for credit cards; it's also the genesis of the "we don't take Discover" joke above. Better for consumers == merchants have more hassles.

In my experience any time a merchant tells me they don't take Amex, they actually do take Amex but the owner / manager doesn't like paying the higher merchant fees so refuses it since most people carry an alternative payment card. I generally insist, and actually if any merchant /does/ accept Amex and claims they don't, it's a violation of their merchant agreement and you can report them for this.

With the exception of international travel, while I'm in the US I generally /only/ carry my Amex, because it's as good as cash for any of the businesses I'd generally want to frequent anyhow.

I spent a week in Cologne recently and used my Amex almost everywhere I went.

On their investor day, Amex said their aspiration is to reach 80% merchant coverage in France, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Finland by 2026

Lot of places take Amex now. I see most POS taking it. There are some holdouts who only take Visa, Mastercard but pretty much everywhere in my small town take Amex without any comments.

On their investor day in May, Amex said international acceptance was one of their highest priorities. And they have been making impressive progress in target markets.

The real problem is consumer presumption of lack of amex acceptance.

True! They mentioned that too. Technical acceptance level is not the same as consumer or even merchant awareness.

This is not just UK. eBay will not take Amex after next month on all its sites.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/6/24173108/ebay-american-exp...

https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/newsroom/articles/comp...