American Express has started offering digital memorabilia to customers in the form of non-giant token stamps issued on the base blockchain.
Summary
- American Express publishes NFT travel departments on the Ethereum Layer-2 base for American cardholders.
- The NFT stamps cannot be transferred or sold on the open market.
- Stamps are ERC-721 tokens that show it visited, description and the date of the country or the region without storing personal information.
From September 16, American Express officially unveiled The Amex passport initiative, with which the payment giant NFT issues for customers who keep the American Amex Consumer card and link it to their online account.
Each stamp is an ERC-721 token that is issued on the Ethereum Layer-2-Basis and is designed to capture the journey of a traveler by showing the visited country or region, along with a short description and the date on which it was earned. No personal information or details of the trip on the blockchain would be recorded.
In contrast to most commercially available NFTs, Amex stamps have no monetary value and cannot be traded on the open market. It is only accessible via the Amex passport section on the official Amex Travel app and will not incur additional costs.
“While physical passport stamps continue to disappear, Amex -passport offers a chance for card members to celebrate their travels,” said Luke Gebb, Executive Vice President at Amex Digital Labs, the subsidiary that developed the initiative.
According to that of the company websiteStamps would be automatically visible in the Amex passport section after a customer makes a ‘personal purchase’ during his travels, to one of the 130 eligible countries and regions using the physical card or a digital wallet such as Apple Pay or Google Pay.
Facts From Base Explorer shows that the Smart contract from Amex Travel Stamp was made 25 days ago and more than 20,000 NFTs have been issued to date.
In recent years, NFTs have gone beyond speculative assets, evolve into collectable digital rewards that offer an unchanging way to mark experiences, build loyalty and give travelers a permanent record of their travels, in addition to many other use cases.
In 2023, the German aviation company Lufthansa Group started to offer passengers NFTS who were published as rewards on the Polygon Blockchain. More recently, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation has issued NFT tickets several times for certain special trains.
Earlier this year, the Jeju Island of South Korea considered the launch of an NFT-based Digital Tourism Resident Card somewhere in the second half of 2025, which would offer exclusive benefits, such as travel subsidies, benefits of membership and discounts on local attractions.
American Express and Coinbase launch Bitcoin card
For American Express, this is not the first time that it works closely with a crypto-native company. The launch of Amex passports comes only a few months after Coinbase unveiled the Coinbase One card in collaboration with American Express.
The map is planned for release this fall and offers Bitcoin as a cashback reward for transactions, starting at 2% and scales up to 4%, depending on the assets interest of the user on Coinbase.
