American Express as Global Financial Giant

During the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s American Express grew into a global financial giant, acquiring a number of companies, including Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company in 1968 (which it sold in 1985) and the brokerage firms Shearson Loeb Rhoades Inc. in 1981 (which later grew into Shearson Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.), Investors Diversified Services in 1984, and E. F.


Hutton in 1987. In 1987 the company introduced the American Express Optima credit card to compete with the growing popularity of cards issued by competitors MasterCard and Visa.


Unlike its original American Express credit card, the Optima card did not require cardholders to pay their balances in full each month. Instead, like MasterCard and Visa, the Optima card allowed cardholders to pay balances in installments, plus interest.

MasterCard International Incorporated

Credit card and payment system company based in Purchase, New York, near New York City. As of 2001, MasterCard had more than 1.7 billion credit, charge, and debit cards in circulation.


MasterCard is collectively owned by more than 20,000 member financial institutions around the world. Each of these institutions issues its own localized version of the MasterCard, and each establishes the terms—such as fees and interest rates—that it offers to cardholders.