American Express OptBlue

OptBlue is a program started by American Express (Amex) to offer an affordable way for small businesses to accept their cards. To be able to use the OptBlue program, the business must process less than $1 million dollars in American Express cards each year.

Before OptBlue, small businesses had much higher processing fees for Amex cards. Because the rates were so high, many businesses chose not to accept American Express cards – leading to the new more afordable OptBlue pricing for small businesses. Many American express cards are used by businesses and corporations and are usually used for larger transactions. Reducing the rates for small businesses makes them much more likely to accept Amex.

Benefits of Amex OptBlue

OptBlue gives smaller businesses the ability to accept Amex cards at an affordable rate. Beyond the cost savings, businesses can aquire OptBlue processing through the same payment processing company that supplies their Visa and MasterCard processing bringing all of the merchants services together in one place with one easy to understand statement at the end of the month.

Additional Fees accociated with OptBlue

OptBlue rates are shown below but there are a few additional fees you should be aware of. First, there is a 0.15% network fee applied to the gross volume. Second, there is an additional 0.30% fee added on to any card not present transaction. It should be noted that these fees are not exorbitant and are pretty much the same as the same fees applied by Visa and MasterCard.