Every year, ideas emerge across American Express from teams solving customer problems, improving internal capabilities, and exploring new technologies. The challenge is identifying which ideas are truly novel and strategically important. Our patent program helps do exactly that, providing a disciplined framework for evaluating and safeguarding innovations that can create value for our customers and strengthen our enterprise capabilities.

Each invention goes through a structured review that brings together legal, technical, and business perspectives. A key part of that process is the Patent Advisory Board, a group of leaders from across Amex who apply their subject matter expertise to help assess whether to file a patent application. The Board evaluates factors such as patentability, business relevance, and whether an innovation could realistically be detected if adopted by others. This multidisciplinary review helps ensure filing decisions are both strategic and informed.

The result is a curated portfolio that favors impact over volume. That’s why we focus our filing efforts across areas such as payments, identity and authentication, digital wallets, cryptographic and network security, and AI/ML innovations that support fraud prevention, customer servicing, and commerce experiences.

Capturing Innovation at Scale

Strong patent applications begin with well-developed invention concepts. At American Express, ideas emerge organically from teams building and improving customer experiences every day. Any employee can suggest an invention for patent consideration, enabling the enterprise to capture insights across the organization.

Other ideas for inventions are sparked more intentionally. Through structured invention workshops, we bring together small, cross-functional groups around a focused opportunity statement tied to a specific technology or business challenge. These sessions are designed to give early ideas enough room to form before they are evaluated, while still moving the group toward concrete invention concepts that can be reviewed and developed.

One technique we use is called a springboard: a short idea statement that often begins with prompts like “I wish,” “How could we,” or “I wonder.” That phrasing matters. It protects emerging ideas from early judgment and encourages participants to stay open and build on one another’s thinking. Instead of immediately shutting down ideas that seem infeasible, the group first explores what might be possible if the idea was pushed further. Participants advance one another’s springboards, combine related concepts, and look for the technical leap that could turn an observation or pain point into something more inventive.

The workshops also treat objections differently. Participants can raise concerns, but the format asks them to translate those concerns into “how could we” statements. For example, instead of saying, “That won’t work because adding another fraud check would slow down authorization,” the participant would reframe it as, “How could we add another layer of fraud detection without increasing authorization latency?”

By the end of the session, the tone deliberately shifts. The early part of the workshop is expansive, creative, and judgment-light, focused on generating a wide range of possibilities. The later part becomes more analytical and disciplined. Participants review the captured ideas, identify the strongest concepts, pressure-test them against the original opportunity statement, and begin shaping them into candidate invention disclosures for legal and technical review. This transition from exploration to harvesting is what makes the workshops effective.

One example of a patent that emerged from an invention workshop is U.S. Patent No. 12,380,457, “Optimal Routing of Payments,” which relates to selecting among multiple payment routes based on routing factors and preferences. The workshop began with an opportunity statement focused on enabling a cloud-based network of heterogeneous real-time payment (RTP) networks to facilitate secure, reliable payments across networks and borders.

As participants explored and refined ideas, the discussion converged on a practical challenge: when a payment can travel through multiple networks, how should the system determine the best path for that specific transaction? What began as one of many exploratory concepts evolved through collaboration, refinement and technical scrutiny into an invention disclosure for optimal payment routing. The disclosure ultimately became the “Optimal Routing of Payments” patent, illustrating how invention workshops can transform broad technology challenges into patentable innovations.

The workshops also help us direct invention capture toward areas that are especially important to our technology strategy. In 2025, for example, invention workshops accounted for many of our AI-related original patent application filings. That matters because the workshops give teams a structured way to explore forward-looking ideas that may not be on a product roadmap today but could shape where our technology goes next.

Recognizing Innovation at Every Level

Innovation at American Express is driven by a culture that acknowledges great inventions can come from anywhere. The patent program plays an important role in that culture, not just by protecting ideas but by recognizing the individuals and teams behind them.

Through initiatives like the American Express Inventor Awards, we highlight the contributions of colleagues whose ideas lead to meaningful innovation.

Looking Ahead

As new technologies continue to reshape financial services, the focus remains consistent: identify the ideas that matter, align them with the future of the business, and invest in their protection.

For us, patents are a strategic tool rather than a scoreboard. We focus on protecting inventions that help differentiate American Express and create lasting value for our customers and our business.