The regulatory body ACPR has just made public that they have fined Amex France 2,000,000 € for, among other things, failing to comply with their duty of surveillance regarding money laundering.

The main grievance was that they allowed their customers to settle their monthly statements by third party bank transfers from France and abroad, as well as card payments not even in the name of the Amex card holder. Another grievance is that they improperly subcontracted internal audit procedures.

The control took place in 2019 and Amex said they would not appeal the ruling. (Source : Les Echos, Money Vox and the ACPR websites).

This is the reason for the suspension and cancellation of thousand of cards in March and April of this year.

The level of incompetence in handling this issue on the part of Amex management beggars belief.

After an an audit of payments in January and February 2021, they indiscriminately applied the same treatment to all card members.

They did not treat differently the card holders who were obviously abusing the system (different payments from different sources) and the ones who would simply make a transfer from the same French account in the name of the cardholder's company, month after month, year on year, with the odd small amount by a 90 yo family member.

After submitting their customers to an unacceptable blackmail ("until you answer our questions, your card will remain suspended"), they cancelled thousands of cards.

I suspect they subcontracted this mani pulite blitz, which would explain the lack of fine tuning in the process.

The other puzzling thing is that the fine is for past irregularities.

Why bother submitting their customers in 2021 with insane questionnaires and requests when even if you answered, they would not allow any longer third party payments anyway.

Why not simply advising their customers that the practice was not allowed any longer?