Interview: American Express Global Corporate Payments President Susan Sobbott

Susan Sobbott last year became president of American Express Global Corporate Payments after her predecessor, Bill Glenn, was appointed to serve as president and CEO of American Express Global Business Travel. Sobbott recently spoke with BTN's JoAnn DeLuna about potential corporate payment growth opportunities and life after the establishment of the GBT joint venture. An edited transcript follows. 

How does the split affect relationships with travel clients that may want to switch card providers?

We very much want to keep clients who are travel clients and expand that base. Occasionally, we have a client that has a corporate card program that doesn't have the travel program. That existed before, and that will exist after the JV. There's nothing new about that. Do we think we have the best possible experience for clients when they have both programs? Absolutely. But we will manage through. Every day we manage clients that don't have business travel, and we will continue to do that. If American Express Corporate Payments has the answer, then GBT will point the client to us. If we don't have the answer, [GBT] could and should point them to somebody else. And if we don't have [the solution] today, we'll do everything possible to deliver that tomorrow.

Do you coordinate with Bill Glenn?

Absolutely. [We work together] on specific accounts. There's a whole list [of accounts] that we're in the process of either renewing or trying to attract. So we're always talking through our approaches together on how to bring our cumulative weight to bear. We're also talking about data, aspirations for the future in terms of data, in how we unify what we do and where that goes for our clients.

What are you hearing from customers?

Every company in the world is under great pressure. There is great need to reduce the cost basis. Every company I'm talking to on a global level of enterprises is really pursuing this global services model, which is to centralize, reduce redundancies, leverage purchasing power and create standardization. As a payments provider, we have to fit to that theme. People want efficiency in the way that they're managing card programs. We bring them this view of all the business they have around the world. Additionally, they're looking to have simplicity in their processes. We're working very hard to [make] managing those expenses … a bit easier. And most importantly, data is very critical. We're trying to give them better data.

Does that mean you're investing in big data?

Absolutely we're investing big in big data. America Express has always been a data company. Today, what we're trying to do is really mine that information for our clients in ways they can make better decisions or have better transparency. For example, we should be able to uncover employee abuse in Tokyo for a client because we can see out-of-pattern behaviors relative to the rest of its employee base or some blip we should be able to call to its attention. We are also developing custom benchmarking studies that can help our clients understand how their peers are evolving and optimizing their expense management programs to become more cutting-edge in areas including payments strategy and policy, business intelligence, managing compliance and employee experience.

We often hear from travel buyers that American Express is not accepted as globally as some of the other networks. How are you improving acceptance around the world?

Certainly card acceptance is an issue that comes up quite often. When we actually sit with clients and go through their accounts payable file and look at the providers [where] they want to use American Express, in most cases American Express is in fact accepted at far more [providers] than they thought. When the card is not being used, it's often because [travelers] don't have the card in their hands or because they're not aware [that the merchant accepts it] or because some employees are choosing to use another card for personal reasons [like] personal rewards points. This doesn't mean acceptance is not an issue. Every day we're growing our network and we've invested quite extensively in it. We've created the OptBlue [small-business acquiring program], which is meant to leverage the same people who were selling Visa and MasterCard acceptance to sell American Express acceptance. We have signed hundreds of thousands of new merchants in a short period of time to expand our network. Outside the United States, we're opening that kind of program in a few European markets. We've also created the Vicinity app, specifically for corporate card members, to establish merchants near them that accept Amex.

What is American Express doing with its virtual card product, vPayment?

VPayment has very strong growth. It is limited to a few countries [Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States]. Our objective is to be able to provide vPayment wherever clients need it and for sectors where it's most important. It's really less about vPayment and more about the problem the client is trying to solve.

What's your take on Apple Pay?

In the corporate programs, we want to know they're kink-free because we're putting an IBM, Siemens or Deutsche Bank through; it better work. Right now, Apple Pay is in development. The American Express corporate card division is committed to investing in mobile platforms so that when these platforms reach broader scale, our corporate card members will have the ability to use them. There's not yet a tremendous amount of presence at point-of-sale for Apple Pay. I imagine bigger corporate clients are eager to make use of it.

Clients are asking what are the things we can do to make employees more productive, motivated and lives easier. We're deeply trying to understand that long list of things we can do so we can prioritize and bring them to bear.

Do you see growth for your division in terms of adding corporate clients or growing the clients you have?

Both. The corporate payments marketplace is a very large marketplace around the world with robust growth. We'll grow by acquiring new companies to use our products and services. We have a large base of existing clients [for which] we can provide more value to them over time.