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Amex for Developers

developer.americanexpress.com

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Re: Amex for Developers

#51

Post by SyneRyder »

lostsock wrote: post #35
locusm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I goto the supermarket once a week so yeah, thats the only time I use it. I've given up asking otherwise.

Most merchants that also accept AMEX have a little sticker in their window. There are actually a lot more businesses that allow you to use an AMEX without a surcharge than there used to be: https://maps.americanexpress.com/aushopsmall#/

If you get time to watch the cycle of logos on the Paypass terminal while you're waiting, it will usually display whether it accepts Amex or not (and also logos now for Apple Pay & Android Pay too).

Re: Amex for Developers

#52

Post by mbesto »

nodesocket wrote: post #37

I'll play devils advocate. If your Netflix and this direct Amex integration saves you 1/2 percent per transaction that makes a huge difference to your bottom line. Netflix current subscribers 83 million and average revenue per subscriber per month is $10.32. $83M * $10.32 = $857M total revenue per month. Assume 10% of transactions are Amex. $857M * .10 = $86M per month. Finally 1/2 percent of $86M is a savings $430,0…

I'm pretty sure at this scale they are not getting standard rates for all of their payments. Actually I know that for a fact (Amex is a customer of mine).

Re: Amex for Developers

#53

Post by [deleted] »

ryan-c wrote: post #42
mgkimsal wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why does the "cost of an engineer" continue to keep going massively up whenever these comparisons are made? $430k? are netflix engineers that special? glassdoor shows sr engineers around $200k - i can't tell if they're including stock/bonus in that or not. Range start in $120k range. Yes, taxes, yes benefits, but... $430k?

Salary + health care + payroll taxes + equipment + space + other overhead, etc.

[deleted]

Re: Amex for Developers

#54

Post by spotman »

Zelphyr wrote: post #23
WhitneyLand wrote: post #5

Wow, talk about too little too late. This kind of late to the party strategy is why startups will always be needed to lead innovation. The irony is the highest ranking person at AmEx who really understands this is probably a pretty smart guy who had to fight and lobby for years to rally enough support to make this happen. edit: Its worse than I thought. A quick search shows they brought in high level talent from Goog…

I've heard how Amex can be from a friend who has them as a client. They refuse to let her host their instance of her product on AWS because Amex's security team supposedly hasn't vetted AWS yet. This despite the kinds of customers Amazon already hosts on AWS (the CIA comes to mind). Not to mention that she has several other very large banks as clients that don't have a problem at all being hosted on AWS. Or that exac…

This is the story of many "enterprise" companies sadly. Some I work for, and while they are slowly changing, I would not say their own data centers (yes, read: data centers) are "little co-located hosting" companies. Usually they are entire departments, with entire budgets and multiple facilities, with many peoples jobs within that.

So while for the developer, moving things to AWS is a no-brainer, a time-saver, and a money-saver to the company, the amount of politics, and change, is so large these behemoths of companies are the last to consider it.

Security is a valid piece, but also a political move to keep the money from changing hands too rapidly.

Re: Amex for Developers

#55

Post by btbuilder »

Zelphyr wrote: post #23
WhitneyLand wrote: post #5

Wow, talk about too little too late. This kind of late to the party strategy is why startups will always be needed to lead innovation. The irony is the highest ranking person at AmEx who really understands this is probably a pretty smart guy who had to fight and lobby for years to rally enough support to make this happen. edit: Its worse than I thought. A quick search shows they brought in high level talent from Goog…

I've heard how Amex can be from a friend who has them as a client. They refuse to let her host their instance of her product on AWS because Amex's security team supposedly hasn't vetted AWS yet. This despite the kinds of customers Amazon already hosts on AWS (the CIA comes to mind). Not to mention that she has several other very large banks as clients that don't have a problem at all being hosted on AWS. Or that exac…

I'm pretty sure Amazon built an isolated region specifically for sensitive government workloads. I don't think public cloud security or regulatory compliance is a given even though the workloads you talk about seem fine for it.

Here it is: https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/

Re: Amex for Developers

#56

Post by btbuilder »

spotman wrote: post #54
Zelphyr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard how Amex can be from a friend who has them as a client. They refuse to let her host their instance of her product on AWS because Amex's security team supposedly hasn't vetted AWS yet. This despite the kinds of customers Amazon already hosts on AWS (the CIA comes to mind). Not to mention that she has several other very large banks as clients that don't have a problem at all being hosted on AWS. Or that exac…

This is the story of many "enterprise" companies sadly. Some I work for, and while they are slowly changing, I would not say their own data centers (yes, read: data centers) are "little co-located hosting" companies. Usually they are entire departments, with entire budgets and multiple facilities, with many peoples jobs within that. So while for the developer, moving things to AWS is a no-brainer, a time-saver, and a…

Also not necessary a no-brainer on cost:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/10/prweb13764156.htm

"But where labor efficiency is greater than [400 VMs per engineer], OpenStack becomes more financially attractive. In fact, past this tipping point, all private cloud options are cheaper than both public cloud and managed private cloud options."

This study does ignore the services supplied on top of basic compute, however.

Re: Amex for Developers

#57

Post by tomschlick »

contingencies wrote: post #12
OliverJones wrote: post #4

Hmm. For the typical card-not-present (online) use case, stripe.com and paypal do a pretty darn good job of processing AMEX payment cards, as well as the others. Tokenization is vital in this age of cybermiscreants. Ya don't want customer payment card data in your dbms. The stripe.com API offers tokenization, and it offers the ability to send and validate data like zip/postcode, cvv and street address to cut fraud. T…

offers tokenization s/tokenization/lockin/ # devil's advocate

From what I have seen you can easily contact support and they will export your customer's card number for import into another provider.

Re: Amex for Developers

#58

Post by mplewis »

mgkimsal wrote: post #40
nodesocket wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UPDATE: I originally thought it was a savings of $430,000 a year, but it is actually a savings of $430,000 a month. ORIGINAL: I think I just talked myself out of my own argument. That $430,000 savings is basically the cost of one Netflix engineer. The technical debt to maintain separate Amex billing easily would exceed $430,000 a year.

why does the "cost of an engineer" continue to keep going massively up whenever these comparisons are made? $430k? are netflix engineers that special? glassdoor shows sr engineers around $200k - i can't tell if they're including stock/bonus in that or not. Range start in $120k range. Yes, taxes, yes benefits, but... $430k?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9588304

"Remember that Netflix does not typically offer bonuses, stock grants, etc, and just pays people a salary."

Re: Amex for Developers

#59

Post by vosper »

btbuilder wrote: post #56
spotman wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the story of many "enterprise" companies sadly. Some I work for, and while they are slowly changing, I would not say their own data centers (yes, read: data centers) are "little co-located hosting" companies. Usually they are entire departments, with entire budgets and multiple facilities, with many peoples jobs within that. So while for the developer, moving things to AWS is a no-brainer, a time-saver, and a…

Also not necessary a no-brainer on cost: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/10/prweb13764156.htm "But where labor efficiency is greater than [400 VMs per engineer], OpenStack becomes more financially attractive. In fact, past this tipping point, all private cloud options are cheaper than both public cloud and managed private cloud options." This study does ignore the services supplied on top of basic compute, however…

Disregarding cost (haha) is OpenStack actually attractive to use? I was under the impression it was a bit of a bear to deploy and operate (my previous employer gave up, though I strongly suspect the project was never resourced properly in the first place).
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