I worked for a US SaaS company about 10 years ago. Every new engineer got a MacBook, iPhone, 3G wifi access point, branded shoulder bag ... And an AMEX. In Europe. Oh how we laughed.

Every time we went to an event on the company dime, we always had to go through the charade in every hotel and restaurant. "Do you accept American Express?"... "Haha, nope!" (To the line of colleagues waiting to check in) "They don't take AMEX". "Bollocks. Well, no surprise." So everyone puts their travel, hotel and meals on their personal Visa/MasterCard and claims back expenses later. I don't think I ever used that AMEX

No, but I have worked at companies where it was the standard for expenses. it was accepted at lauaghably few places.

Visa seems ot be everywhere in the UK, i dont know the stats but seems like most debit cards are visa and if i was to guess amongs my friends etc. its something like 75% or more of credit cards with maybe 20% masterdcard and 5% american express dinerclub etc.

That is why the whole thing seemed like a plea to get me to sign up for an amazon mastercard (and also why mastercard were porbably up for doing a deal with amazon in the uk - to increase amrket share).