In June 2011, American Express announced the formation of a new group, Enterprise Growth (EG). EG was designed to challenge existing credit and charge business models and extend American Express's leadership into the world of digital and mobile forms of payment through the use of software platforms and mobile apps. Alpesh Chokshi, president of EG, and Wesley Wright, product development leader, were well aware of the magnitude of the potential market that was currently underserved by traditional banking services. They saw an opportunity to do something bigger—to move American Express into debit and checking spending. EG called the initiative Bank 2.0, indicating the application of technology to usher in a “next iteration” of banking. Excerpt UVA-S-0242 Rev. Jul. 13, 2020 American Express: Bank 2.0 A New Mission in Enterprise Growth In June 2011, Kenneth Chenault, CEO of American Express (AXP), announced the formation of a new group within the company, Enterprise Growth (EG), to drive expansion into digital and mobile payments. “New technologies are redefining the payments business and creating opportunities that go beyond our existing businesses,” said Chenault in a press release. “The Enterprise Growth group is designed to extend our leadership into the world of alternative payments and create new fee-based revenue streams for the post-recession environment.” To lead the group, AXP hired Dan Schulman from Sprint Corporation (where he had headed the Prepaid Group after previously serving as founding CEO of Virgin Mobile USA, as president and CEO of Priceline.com Incorporated, and in other leadership positions). “Technology [is] fundamentally going to change the way you might think about financial services,” Schulman said during one of his first meetings with EG, “just as the Internet has redefined one industry after another.” EG, he continued, was designed “to challenge existing business models” and “to think about the intersection between software, software platforms, mobile apps, mobile technology in general, and financial services.” For Alpesh Chokshi and Wesley Wright, this was the moment they had been waiting for. Both of them had been at AXP since 2001 and had worked in its prepaid business since 2005. When EG was formed, their group had moved into EG with a mandate to drive expansion beyond AXP's traditional credit and charge business on a global basis. Chokshi was the president and Wright led product development. Before moving into EG, together with their team they had driven the expansion of AXP's prepaid business into gift cards and reloadable cards. Now, with the support of Chenault and Schulman, they saw an opportunity to do something bigger—to move AXP into debit and checking spending, a large sector of payments in which it did not currently play (see Exhibit 1 for AXP consolidated financial performance and Exhibits 2 through 4 for performance metrics of the US cards business). Their team had begun calling the initiative Bank 2.0, indicating the application of technology to usher in a “next iteration” of banking. . . .