Amex Serve & Bluebird Adding Financial Managment Tools

American Express (NYSE: AXP) today announced it will add free personal financial management tools to American Express Serve1 and Bluebird starting this summer. These tools help customers monitor their spending by automatically sorting transactions into categories such as bills, food, fun, shopping and transportation so they can easily track where their money is going. When customers log in to their Serve and Bluebird accounts, they will also be able to create budgets, set spending limits and alerts, as well as set and track financial goals.

“With these new tools, we’re making it simple for our customers to know where their money is being spent, so they can track and manage their finances easily,” said Dan Schulman, group president, Enterprise Growth at American Express. “We’re focused on providing comprehensive and affordable options for the nearly 70 million unbanked and underbanked households in America2. We are pleased that consumers are finding value in our products, demonstrated by the strong demand we’re seeing for Serve and Bluebird.”

Bluebird and Serve Momentum

In the first four months of the year, American Express acquired 2.4 million customers on the Serve Platform, which includes Serve and Bluebird in the U.S. and LianLian in China, with over one million customers acquired in the month of April alone3.

For this same period, transaction volume processed on the Serve platform was $1.9 billion, almost tripling from the same period last year and representing an annual run rate of nearly six billion dollars.

Building Positive Financial Behaviors
Bluebird and Serve customers are demonstrating positive financial behaviors by using Direct Deposit to automatically add paychecks or government benefits to their accounts and putting money away for short term savings in a SetAside or Reserve account.

More than forty percent of funds added to Bluebird and Serve came through Direct Deposit year-to-date, which has been consistent since the feature was introduced. Customers are also putting away more than twenty-five percent of the money they add to their primary accounts each month into a linked SetAside or Reserve account. They are transferring money into SetAside or Reserve an average of three times a month, and they are using this money for future purchases like a vacation, big event, or for emergency funds.

Amex Serve Adding Family Dollar to Free Reload Network

By July Serve users will be able to load their cards at no charge at any Family Dollar store.

This will bring the total of free load locations to almost 28,000 nationwide.