Amex to acquire Resy, growing its dining tech arsenal

American Express has agreed to acquire Resy, a digital restaurant reservation booking and management platform.

The deal builds on several recent American Express purchases aimed to provide more digital services, experiences and access for cardholders. In January 2018 Amex acquired the Mezi personal assistant travel app. In March of that year, Amex acquired Cake Technologies, a U.K.-based fintech that provides mobile payments for restaurants and bars, for $13.3 million. This January Amex acquired Pocket Concierge, a Japanese restaurant booking service, and in March it acquired LoungeBuddy, a digital platform that enables travelers to discover, book and access over 1,200 airport lounges worldwide.

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Resy offers restaurants a suite of technology that facilitates table management, CRM and booking technology. Since its founding in 2014, Resy has built a client portfolio of 4,000 restaurants in over 150 U.S. cities and operates in 10 countries, including the U.K., Canada and Australia. Resy serves more than 2.6 million diners per week on its platform.

The acquisition is expected to be completed in summer 2019. No purchase price or other financial details about the acquisition were released.

“There are myriad points of synergy between Resy and American Express that we look forward to pursuing together in the name of creating an end-to-end global dining platform that thrills both diners and restaurants alike,” Ben Leventhal, a Resy co-founder and its CEO, said in a press release.

According to Crunchbase, a website that tracks investments in private startups, Resy has raised $15 million in two funding rounds since 2014. Its Series A funding round which was completed in 2017 raised $13 million with the lead investor being Airbnb. Resy’s monthly website traffic, according to Similar Web, is approximately 1.25 million visitors, of which 54% of which are U.S.-based.

After the Resy acquisition is completed, the Resy brand and digital platform will continue to be led and operated by its two co-founders, Leventhal and CTO Michael Montero.