American Express Pay It Plan It Shakes Up the Normal Credit Card Operation

Credit cards have long been both blessing and curse for their users. The ability to delay payment on purchases is excellent for emergencies, and credit cards do wonders as the basis for mobile payment systems. Yet credit card debt is a problem for many, and that’s almost an understatement. American Express may have a new tool to help in its recently-released Pay It Plan It feature that lets users pay for credit card purchases both in the usual way, and in a new way: immediately.

Pay It Plan It will be available to both US consumer credit cards as well as any co-branded cards, allowing users to either purchase the thing immediately—generally for purchases under $100—or users can immediately select a payment plan that ranges from three months to two years, all for a fixed fee and with no interest. Naturally, the standard approach of paying the whole thing off at the end of the month or paying a certain minimum quantity instead will still be in play.

American Express’ head of global consumer lending Kartik Mani commented “Pay It was inspired by card members who prefer making multiple payments throughout the month. Now we’ve made it even easier to do this in our app. For larger purchases, we developed Plan It to give card members another way to pay over time with a ‘no surprises’ plan that offers transparent, monthly payments for a fixed fee.”

Essentially, this program just gives users a few more options; it doesn’t require the user to change behavioral patterns at all, but for those who’d like the opportunity to, it’s there. That’s a good plan to have, overall; customers generally like to have options, and here, American Express is providing them in a fashion fairly easy to put in play. It might not be enough to get it back market share sufficient to knock Visa or Mastercard out of the top two, but it likely will be enough to hold its share and let it carry on.

It’s all about options in the end, and American Express is delivering these options. It might not help as much as the company might like, but it sure can’t hurt.