specification: API Commons Rate Limits
specificationVersion: '0.1'
schema: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/interface-research/main/schema/api-commons.yml#/$defs/RateLimits
provider: American Express
providerId: american-express
created: '2026-05-04'
# Provenance stamped 2026-08-11: this artifact was written by the API Evangelist
# bulk sweep dated 2026-05-04, not harvested from the provider. See roadmap#35.
method: generated
modified: '2026-05-05'
reconciled: false
tags:
  - Credit Cards
  - Financial Services
  - Payments
  - Tokenization
  - Fraud Prevention
  - Rewards
  - Banking
  - Rate Limiting
description: >-
  American Express does not publish public API rate limits for its developer products. Throughput, SLA, and concurrency are negotiated under each merchant or issuing-partner agreement. Reconcile if Amex publishes public rate-limit documentation.
notes: >-
  American Express developer APIs (Token Service / AETS, Enhanced Authorization, Account & Transaction) are partner-only. Access requires a merchant or issuing-partner agreement; pricing is embedded in the merchant discount rate / interchange and acquirer fees rather than a stand-alone API price. Rate limits and SLAs are governed per-contract and not published publicly. Reconcile if Amex publishes a public price list or rate-limit page.
sources:
  - https://developer.americanexpress.com/
  - https://developer.americanexpress.com/products/amex-token-service/overview
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
  serviceUnavailable: 503
limits:
  - name: Undocumented - bilateral agreement
    scope: contract
    metric: varies
    limit: 'see partner agreement; not publicly documented'
policies:
  - name: Documentation Status
    description: >-
      American Express does not publish public per-second or per-minute API rate
      limits. Throughput, concurrency, and burst behavior are governed by the
      relevant partner, supplier, or merchant agreement.
  - name: Backoff Strategy
    description: >-
      Where any HTTP API is exposed, clients should implement exponential
      backoff with jitter and honor any Retry-After header returned on 429
      or 503 responses.
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com