That hard-to-get reservation at the just-opened restaurant? It might run through a booking platform owned by your credit card company. The court-side tickets and the post-game meet-and-greet? Same. The hotel you’re about to book, the car ride to the restaurant, the points that post when the check arrives—increasingly, all of it lives inside infrastructure controlled by a single card issuer.
When American Express acquired the restaurant reservation platform Resy in 2019 and integrated it into its mobile app as a benefit for rewards cardholders, it was the first of its kind in an increasingly perk-heavy ecosystem that has come to encompass the credit card industry. Five years later, Amex paid $400 million for Tock, the reservation and table management service, expanding its foothold in a dining category that accounted for $100 billion in spending on Amex cards in 2024 alone. In 2021, Chase acquired The Infatuation, a restaurant discovery platform, and has since built exclusive dining promotions, food festivals, and content access into its Sapphire card lineup.
