How to become an American Express supplier (and what its diversity program actually does)

Registering as an American Express supplier is a form. You can finish it in an afternoon. The thing nobody tells you is that the form is the easy 5%. Getting a buyer at Amex to actually route spend your way is the other 95%, and it runs on a timeline measured in quarters, not days.

American Express spends billions a year with outside vendors, across technology, marketing, professional services, facilities, travel, and card operations. Some of that goes to diverse-owned firms. If you own a minority-, women-, veteran-, LGBTQ+-, or disability-owned business and you want a piece of it, here's how registration really works, which certifications carry weight, and what changed in 2025 that you should know before you build a strategy around it.

Where you actually register

Amex routes prospective suppliers through a small set of front doors. Start at the company's Supplier Management page, which is the official hub.

The main intake for new and diverse suppliers is SupplierOne (amex.supplierone.co), a registration portal built on Supplier.io, the third-party supplier-intelligence platform a lot of Fortune 500 procurement teams use. When you submit through SupplierOne, your company gets entered into Amex's supplier database. If a buyer has an opportunity that matches what you do, they reach out. Submitting does not guarantee a contract, and it does not start a sales conversation by itself. It makes you findable.

If you already have an Amex contact, there's also a vendor intake form at stream.americanexpress.com/VendorIntake, and the procurement team publishes a general inbox, amexp2psupplierqueries@aexp.com, for supplier questions. Use the inbox when you're stuck, not as a pitch channel.

A note on confusion that costs people time: "American Express supplier registration" turns up merchant onboarding pages and Global Business Travel consulting content in search. Those are different. Merchant signup is about accepting Amex cards. Amex GBT helps Amex's own clients build supplier diversity programs. Neither one gets you hired as a vendor to American Express. The procurement and SupplierOne paths above are the ones that do.

What the registration collects

Plan to have the same records ready that any corporate intake asks for. Amex's supplier profile captures contact information, company details, the goods or services you provide, banking and payment information, and your diversity classifications. That last field is where your certification number goes, so it should be in hand before you register, not after.

Get your records straight first. A buyer who pulls your profile and sees a half-finished entry, no NAICS or service codes, no certification, no clear description of what you sell, moves on. Treat the profile like a storefront, because to a procurement team running market research, that's exactly what it is.

Which certifications Amex recognizes

American Express does not run its own certification. Like most large corporate buyers, it relies on third-party certifying bodies, and it has long-standing relationships with the major ones:

• NMSDC (National Minority Supplier Development Council) for minority business enterprises (MBEs). Amex has maintained corporate membership with NMSDC and participated in its national conference and business fairs.
• WBENC (Women's Business Enterprise National Council) for women business enterprises (WBEs). Same pattern: corporate membership, conference presence.
• NGLCC (National LGBT Chamber of Commerce) for LGBT Business Enterprises (LGBTBE). American Express was among the founding corporate partners of the NGLCC supplier diversity initiative, alongside firms like IBM and JPMorgan Chase.

Veteran-owned and service-disabled veteran-owned status (typically certified through NaVOBA or the federal VetCert program) and disability-owned status (Disability:IN) are recognized diversity categories in corporate programs generally, and a credible certification in any of these makes your profile sortable when a buyer filters for diverse suppliers.

The practical takeaway: a third-party certification is what turns "small business that says it's minority-owned" into a record a procurement system can verify and report on. Corporate supplier diversity exists partly so companies can measure and report diverse spend, and they can only count spend with certified firms. No certification, no count. If you're not certified yet, that's the first move, and CertifyAll handles the filing across the bodies that apply to you so you're not running each application separately.

What changed in 2025

Be clear-eyed about the climate. In its 2025 proxy statement, American Express removed diversity-representation language from its executive compensation framework, stating that its executive pay program no longer uses diversity performance goals. Reporting on that change (Banking Dive, 2025) noted Amex had listed diversity representation as an incentive metric in its 2023 and 2024 proxies and dropped it for 2025.

What that means for you, honestly: the internal pressure that pushed some buyers to hit a diverse-spend number got lighter. Amex did not announce that it shut down supplier diversity or cut ties with NMSDC, WBENC, or NGLCC, and its supplier management pages still invite diverse suppliers to register. But tying your pitch to "you have a diversity quota to hit" is a weaker play in 2026 than it was in 2022. The stronger play, and the one that was always more durable, is being the better vendor at a fair price who happens to be certified diverse. Certification gets you in the filtered search. Your capability and your numbers win the work.

A realistic on-ramp

If you're starting from zero, sequence it like this:

1. Get certified through the body that matches your ownership (NMSDC, WBENC, NGLCC, NaVOBA, or Disability:IN). This is the gate.
2. Register on SupplierOne and complete the Amex supplier profile fully, certification number included.
3. Tighten your capability statement and codes so a buyer running market research can tell in 15 seconds what you do and whether you fit.
4. Find the human. Database registration makes you findable; relationships get you shortlisted. NMSDC and WBENC national conferences are where Amex's diversity and procurement people actually show up. That's the room.
5. Consider Tier 2. If you can't land direct (Tier 1) spend with Amex yet, many of its large prime suppliers carry their own diverse-spend targets and subcontract to certified firms. Getting in as a Tier 2 supplier to an Amex prime is often a faster first dollar than a direct contract, and it builds the past performance that makes a direct relationship credible later.

Don't expect a fast yes. Corporate procurement cycles are long, and a cold registration with no follow-up usually sits. The owners who break through treat Amex like a named account: they certify, register, show up where the buyers are, and follow up with a specific value proposition instead of a generic "we're diverse and we'd love to work with you."

Set expectations on timing too. From a cold registration to a first conversation can run two or three quarters, and from conversation to a signed agreement, often another two. The firms that win budget for an 18-month runway and treat the early months as relationship-building, not selling. If you need revenue this quarter, Amex is the wrong place to look for it; if you're building a pipeline for next year, it's a name worth working patiently.

Where to go from here

American Express is one corporate program. The same playbook, certify, register in the supplier database, find the buyer, work Tier 2 first, applies across NMSDC and WBENC corporate members. Our corporate program directory lists the major buyers with active diverse-supplier programs so you can build a target list instead of chasing one logo. If you want the broader strategy for getting into these programs, read how to get into corporate supplier diversity programs. And once your profile is sharp, list it on our supplier directory so corporate buyers searching for diverse vendors can find you too.

Registration is the on-ramp. Certification, a real capability statement, and a name in the room are what turn a database entry into a contract.