Amex’s Luke Gebb on agentic commerce, AI and blockchain

American Express is building technical tools and customer protections to let AI agents make purchases on behalf of card members while keeping transactions secure, and is testing public-blockchain features for travel records.

The company published the ACE Developer Kit, short for Amex Agentic Commerce Experiences, to set technical specifications for agent-driven transactions. The kit describes how an agent should present card-member intent, authenticate actions and complete purchases so merchants and the card issuer can verify requests.

Amex also introduced Agent Purchase Protection, a policy that promises to credit card members if an approved agent makes an error that results in an incorrect charge. Gebb explained, “If a registered agent shares card member intent with us and we approve the transaction and it happens, the card member intent was clear, the merchant delivered what they were supposed to, and the agent is the one with the error, we’re going to cover the card member and credit them so that they are not out of pocket for that kind of situation.”

Work on the agent side includes enabling payments for agents, making Amex offers and booking tools available through large language models, and creating conversational agent features inside the Amex app and website. Gebb described the coming period as focused on building foundations and said the team expects agent-enabled transactions to begin in early, trusted use cases.

On the blockchain side, Amex launched Passport, a mobile feature that generates unique NFTs to document customers’ travel histories and memories. Most users see Passport as a digital travel log and do not necessarily know the service runs on a public blockchain. The lab is also researching stablecoins and other blockchain-backed payment options at an early stage.

Gebb runs Amex Digital Labs, an internal innovation unit formed in 2017 that develops experimental ideas and moves mature products into the business units. The lab has about 120 people and aims to pilot roughly 20 projects a year, then hand successful projects to the appropriate teams for wider rollout. Gebb has led Digital Labs since 2017 and was named global head of innovation last October.

Part of Gebb’s role is to help business teams and engineers plan development and apply governance based on project risk. High-risk efforts, such as new ways of moving money, go through full compliance and controls. Lower-risk customer features follow faster, risk-adjusted processes so they can be tested and iterated more quickly.

Gebb compared the current wave of AI and blockchain activity to past shifts such as the arrival of e-commerce and mobile. He does not expect agent-enabled commerce or blockchain services to replace websites and physical stores in the medium term, and he said improvements in large language models will influence how quickly consumers trust and use agents.