American Express brings in the Global Shop Small Campaign to India

American Express India recently came up with a new offer named Shop Small to select cardholders that comes with the ability to save upto Rs.1500. Here’s everything you need to know about the offer,

What is Shop Small Campaign?

American Express runs the Shop Small campaign globally every year in select countries to help small businesses grow and at the same time reward the American Express cardholders.

That’s of-course part of the story!

In reality though, its a clever marketing campaign to acquire customers and merchants through a single offer. That’s truly a well designed marketing plan and am happy that it works for them.

For 2020, AmEx has pledged $200 million to the Shop Small campaign globally to help small merchants and customers connect during tough times.

That’s very generous of Amex and definitely deserves an appreciation. Now let’s see what they have done for india and then compare with other countries.

Shop Small Offer Details – India

Offer: Spend Rs.1500 or more and get Rs.300 cashback per txn
Max cap: upto 5 times, which is Rs.300*5 = Rs.1500 max cashback
Offer Validity: 4 September 2020 to 30 November 2020.
Fulfilment: Usually within 5 business days.

Its a decent offer for sure as saving 20% upto Rs.1500 with small merchants is quite generous at-least on entry-level cards.

But there are 2 problems!

First, the offer is limited to few cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and some of the surrounding areas and so only those card accounts registered in these cities are targeted for the offer.

I don’t know what made them to make this not so wonderful decision.

Second, its nowhere close to the global campaign by any metric. Here’s the comparison for you to check:

Global Campaign Comparison

This year Amex rolled out the Shop Small campaign for various countries bit early due to Covid-19 and here’s how it looks when compared to Indian offer:

UK Offer: Spend £10 or more to get £5 back upto 10 times (£50 Value = INR 4800)
USA Offer: Spend $10 or more and get $5 back upto 10 times ($50 Value = INR 3600)
Australia Offer: Spend $10 or more and get $5 back upto 10 times ($50 Value = ~INR 2600)
Canada Offer: Spend $10 or more and get $5 back upto 10 times ($50 Value = ~INR 2800)
India Offer: Spend Rs.1500 ($20) or more and get Rs.300 ($4) back upto 5 times ($20 Value = INR 1500)

Yes, the developed countries could be giving more business and so better offer, but I believe India is equally growing and giving good business to them, yet we’re valued low!!!

And not to mention, our Indian platinum charge carries higher annual fee than the US variant (550$ = 41,000 INR) and overall we get less value back than the low priced US variant. (generally, ignoring covid offers).

So we’re forced for high fee, low value return and low value offers. Hmm, this doesn’t seem to move in right direction.