American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP) is scheduled to release its most recent quarterly results after the markets close on Wednesday. The consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters are $1.82 in earnings per share (EPS) on $10.05 billion in revenue. The second quarter of last year reportedly had EPS of $1.47 and $8.31 billion in revenue.

The company began testing a blockchain version of its customer rewards program in May and now will go one step deeper into blockchain development with a patent application related to a proof of payment (PoP) system. The idea behind the system is to provide better evidence of payment transactions between merchants and their customers.

As described in the application, the PoP system comprises a processor, instruction memory and execution space that verifies a payment with a transaction amount and merchant identifier.

Being the first to weave together the parts of a blockchain-based PoP system could pay big dividends to American Express, but not for some time yet. Other big financial services firms also will take a run at this business. American Express wants to be first.

Excluding Wednesday’s move, Amex has outperformed the broad markets in the past 52 weeks, with its stock up about 19%. In just 2018 alone, the stock is up only 2%.

A few analysts weighed in on Amex prior to the release:

• Jefferies has a Hold rating with a $105 price target.
• Stephens has a Hold rating and a $97 price target.
• Buckingham Research has a Buy rating with a $112 target.
• Barclays has an Equal Weight rating and a $113 price target.
• Guggenheim has a Hold rating with a $104 target price.

Shares of Amex were last seen up about 1% at $102.47, with a consensus analyst price target of $109.68 and a 52-week trading range of $83.33 to $103.24.

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