Physical passport stamps are becoming less common, but an American Express survey found that 73% of adults want more ways to digitally commemorate their trips abroad. A manager at American Express had an idea: turning card transactions into virtual collectible stamps, accessible through the Amex mobile app. Teams spanning American Express’s Digital Labs, tech, travel, and other departments created what’s now called Amex Passport, harnessing blockchain technology to generate and track the stamps, which have become one of the largest nonfungible token (NFT) collections on the blockchain platform Base. In response to customer feedback, Amex has expanded the program so cardholders can generate stamps for trips going back to 2019.
Amex Passport made its debut within an in-app environment letting customers “Try New Features,” and it comes as the company tests and deploys other innovative technologies behind the scenes, with hundreds of artificial intelligence use cases explored. An annual Innovation Challenge took in more than 110 ideas in 2025 alone. The most promising ones made their way into a formal development process after workshopping with Amex Digital Labs, an innovation unit of roughly 120 people that focuses on transforming ideas into customer-facing pilots.
“Everyone’s goal is to go to market with something and learn,” says Luke Gebb, executive vice president and head of global innovation at American Express. “No one is writing white papers or putting forward theories.”
Among other recent innovations at Amex was a centralized, cloud-based data platform called Lumi, which now helps detect fraud, enhances customer support offerings, and empowers still more AI experimentation. Internal innovation awards, a global hackathon featuring more than 400 teams, and a training platform called Amex U that launched in March 2026 also help power American Express’s culture of innovation, as competition remains fierce in the credit card marketplace.
