American Express has partnered with Ticketmaster to provide the person buying all the tickets for a group with encouragement to use Serve to “Get Paid Back.” The Ticketmaster purchase confirmation page will now contain a box that suggests using Serve to send money requests. However, there are still a number of obstacles between Serve and ticket buyers:
…there’s still the not-so-small problem of getting everyone signed up. Both sender and recipient must have Serve accounts. And while all transaction are currently free, the FAQs warn that coming Jan 1, there will be a fee of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction funded via credit card. Checking account (ACH)-based transactions will remain free.
These P2P features that American Express is aiming to provide through Serve are similar to what has long since been offered by PayPal, with even the fee for credit card-based transactions being exactly the same. PayPal is well established as the dominant online P2P payment service, so American Express will need to continue to wedge their way into situations that call for P2P payments (such as they have done here) in order to establish themselves as a legitimate alternative.
