American Express (Amex) has today set out plans to invest $100m in digital companies with a focus on early stage start-ups. The company’s digital commerce initiative will be led by Harshul Sanghi (pictured), who recently joined as managing partner of the Enterprise Growth Group, from its newly established Silicon Valley office.
Sanghi previously was a senior member of Motorola Mobility Ventures in the US and is building a team of between 30 and 50 people covering investments, application development and business development at Amex. (For analysis for how the financial services industry is looking to California for its corporate venturing deals rather than traditional financial centres of London and New York City, please see the November issue of Global Corporate Venturing, out later this week.)
Sanghi said: "The payments industry is undergoing a fundamental change as the very nature of commerce is redefined.The landscape is evolving from payments to digital payments to digital commerce, which means targeted, personalised offers in the relevant contexts from marketing and advertisings, the ability to do transactions online, offline and on mobiles with an underlying social element and, post-transactions, loyalty and awards.
"Our global network of businesses and consumers, international employee base, world-class customer service and data analytics will provide a significant advantage to potential portfolio companies. We can bring to the table a one-stop partner able to play in a global context."
The company said it would target investments in digital commerce products such as loyalty and rewards schemes, mobile and online payment management, fee-based services, security, fraud detection and data analysis.
In October Amex led online advertising company Clickable’s $12m C round in October, it also participated in US-based e-commerce platform Rearden’s $133m series C round and a $19m round raised by Payfone in April.