American Express said it discontinued a service known as Premium Wire and terminated some employees after workers inappropriately positioned the product to customers.
The credit card company has engaged an external law firm to investigate small business sales practices in the U.S. including the Premium Wire service, which enables businesses to send wire payments globally, it said in a statement.
Some workers had pitched the service to business owners as a way to pay suppliers and earn Amex points, reducing their tax bill, according to an earlier report by The Wall Street Journal.
“This misconduct should not have happened,” American Express said Monday in a statement. “As a result of an internal investigation, we terminated employees and disciplined others, made product changes, adjusted our sales compensation plan, required additional training, and reinforced our permitted sales practices and policies.”
Between 2018 and September 2021, Premium Wire and a separate working capital solution it’s also investigating represented 0.5% of American Express's total network volumes and less than 0.25% of its global revenue, Amex said.
The company has previously said it’s been responding to a regulatory review led by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Justice Department’s Civil Division “regarding historical sales practices relating to certain small-business card sales.”
