American Express came introduced credit cards in the American financial market in about 1950s. By the time, MasterCard and Visa also introduced their services to operate financial transactions which led to the development of an important part in this financial world. They developed their own operational model and set up themselves as reputed bodies in the field of credit card transactions.
You must be thinking that the work of American Express, Visa, and Master Cards is the same, but it is completely different. American Express is a private company which issues credit cards to general people with its direct involvement whereas MasterCard and visa have different operation policies in this sense. They don’t directly issue credit cards to customers. Visa and MasterCard set up their funds to establish financial institutions which issue credit cards to maintain their credit balance.
The operation policies between Visa and Master Card are same but American Express has its own operation system. The annual fees and interest on credit cards are collected by the financial companies on their behalf but not directly by Visa and Master Cards. Whereas, American Express charges different interest rates for itself which is directly collected from the card holders.
American Express issues credit cards with its own logo and name whereas Visa, and MasterCard provide their logo to the authorized financial institutions who operate their financial transactions under their policies and procedures who issue credit cards to the general public.
American Express credit cards are applicable in limited parts of the world whereas Visa and Master card have world wide operations.
Thus, if you are going for credit card for the first time, you should select the best deal for your easy financial life which will also help you to be safe from financial crisis by tracking your daily expenditures.