AmEx Looks to a Pair of Acquisitions to Raise Its Game in the Hotly Competitive Dining Market

American Express Co. early Friday announced it is acquiring Tock, a restaurant-reservation application, from Squarespace Inc. for $400 million, and Rooam, a contactless-payment platform for restaurants, bars, music venues, and arenas, for an undisclosed sum.

Launched in 2014, Tock provides reservation, table-management, and event ticketing capabilities to 7,000 restaurants, wineries, and other bookable venues. The company was acquired by Squarespace in 2021.

The two acquisitions build on AmEx’s 2019 acquisition of Resy, a reservations and restaurant-management platform. AmEx says Resy provides AmEx Platinum cardholders exclusive reservations at some of the most popular restaurants and informs the restaurant the cardholder is a member of AmEx’s Global Dining Access program. Sources at the time indicated AmEx paid about $200 million for the company.

While competition among payments providers for the dining market has grown hot in recent years, restaurants historically have been one of AmEx’s largest cardholder-spending categories, generating $100 billion in volume in 2023, the company says. Strength in this market reflects the company’s roots in travel-and-entertainment processing.

“For decades, we’ve been connecting diners and restaurants because American Express card members are passionate about dining out, and restaurants trust American Express to deliver premium customers to them and provide tools to help them run their businesses,” an AmEx spokesperson says by email.

The addition of Tock’s network is expected to expand the number of highly popular restaurants at which AmEx cardholders can make reservations through the Resy platform. AmEx says it and Squarespace will also partner to deliver additional value for small business cardholders through the Amex Offers program and card member benefits.

“Tock will enhance our ability to help diners discover and book tables … while providing merchants with access to even more premium diners,” the AmEx spokesperson says.

Rooam, which was founded in 2015, integrates contactless-payments capability directly into existing POS systems without additional hardware. AmEx in turn intends to integrate Rooam into the Resy dashboard to enhance mobile ordering and payment capabilities for restaurants. “Rooam will allow us to expand and enhance the suite of technology features we offer restaurants to help their businesses thrive,” says the AmEx spokesperson.

Since acquiring Resy, AmEx has increased the number of engaged diners within its cardholder base threefold and the number of restaurants in its merchant network more than fivefold, the card company says. An engaged diner is a cardholder who has booked a reservation or set a notification through a digital channel within the past six months, according to AmEx.