Originally Posted by
Adelphos
The way the benefit is structured doesn't promote any spending for Amex on Uber because the cash benefit is deposited directly into the Uber app. Almost all of my Uber spending goes on the Chase Sapphire Reserve because it earns 3x on travel (recently I've been putting all Uber spend on a Discover card due to the 5% rotating category). I actually find the Uber benefit the easiest to use because it is basically $10 cash deposited once a month into an account I already heavily use.
But to get the Amex benefit into your Uber app, you must add your Amex card to the account, where someone might not have had the card there already, or might not have had Uber at all.
Remember that 99% of the world is not on FT. The people like us who add this benefit and then use another card within the app itself are a very small subset of people who even add the card at all, which is again a subset of people who know about the benefit, which again is a subset of people who have an Amex Plat to begin with.
You're talking about a population funnel that looks like this:
- People with an Amex Plat
- Have Amex Plat & know about Uber benefit
- Have Plat + know benefit + already have or go and get Uber app
- Plat + know + app + take the step of adding Plat card to app
- Plat + know + app + add card + actually use the service
- Plat + know + app + add + use + add another CC and/or swap payment method away from Amex Plat
For the bulk of Amex users, this benefit unquestionably (to me) results in a net add of three things:
1. People downloading the Uber app
2. People using Uber
3. People paying for their Ubers with an Amex Plat card
All of those are desirable outcomes for Uber and Amex. Full stop.