By Sharon Hill

With a considerable twist on the traditional Daily Deals format, American Express has chosen Twitter as its social platform for distribution of Daily Deals to its 97 million card holders. AmEx cardholders that go to https://sync.americanexpress.com/twitter can sync their credit cards with Twitter to qualify for the deals. To do this she or he would simply provide, name, card number and e-mail address. The card holder then tweets a Twitter hashtag or search term unique to a specific offer. Once he purchases the Deal those savings are automatically credited to his AmEx card statement within one to three days.

This system keeps the cardholder on Twitter to complete the purchase, rather than being redirected to the merchant’s site. It also eliminates the need for the merchant’s cashier, clerk, or wait staff’s familiarity with the deal. The card takes card of all that discounting.

According to The Washington Post,  the typical AmEx Twitter deal will be “buy $50 worth of goods, get $10 back.” McDonalds, Ticketmaster, Best Buy and Dell are among the first 16 committed merchants. There is no merchant entry fee at this time.

This suggests all sorts of possibilities for classified and online marketplace publishers who would like to offer platform-specific social-media-involved deals to their advertisers, who could then provide them to the publisher’s visitors and readers.