American Express has introduced Ethereum-based ‘travel stamps’ to create a memorial for travel experiences as part of the company’s renewed travel app.
The travel experience makers who are technical NFTs (ERC 721 tokens)is embossed and stored on Coinbas’s basic network, said Colin Marlowe, VP, new partnerships at AMEX Digital Labs.
The travel stamps that can be collected at any time a traveler uses their cards are not marketable NTF-tokens, Marlowe explained, nor do they act as blockchain-based loyalty points-in the least for the time being.
“It’s a worthless ERC-721, technically an NFT, but we just don’t notice it as such. We wanted to talk to it in a way that was natural for the travel experience itself, and so we talk about these things as stamps and they are represented as tokens,” Marlowe said in an interview.
“As an identifier and representation of history, the stamps could create interesting partnership angles over time. We did not try to sell these or kind of generate any similar revenue in the short term. The angle is to make a travel experience with Amex feel really rich, really different and kind of separating it,” he said.
Fireblocks is also involved, supporting Amex as its wallet-as-a-service provider to the passport product, a four-block representative said.
The AMEX Travel app also includes a number of tools for travel and Centurion Lounge upgrades, the company says.
