Will Amex cancel my merchant agreement because I'm not paying my credit card bill?

[buzzworm]

Hi, I've recently stopped paying all my credit cards to attempt to settle them. I'm two payments behind on my Amex card and they sent me a nasty letter saying that if I don't pay in 10 days they will cancel all Amex accounts.

We have a small business (sole proprietorship) with an Amex merchant agreement (i.e. we accept Amex cards from customers).

Does anybody know if Amex will connect the two entities based on my SSN or address or something and stop our ability to collect Amex cards from customers because I haven't been paying my Amex card bill?

[OverandDone]

Do you have a bundled merchant service with several different kinds of cards all on one account? Or separate agreements for each type of card? That might make a difference. Are any of the cards you are defaulting on business account cards with credit issued to the business?

[buzzworm]

Yes, we have a merchant service that handles the four biggies (MC, Visa, Amex, Disc) but on some level Amex is separate. The MC, Visa, and Disc payments are deposited as one lump some but the Amex payments come in separately a few days later. And the Amex merchant fees are deducted separately. I don't know if this has any relevance to our situation.

To my knowledge our only "business" card is our Advanta visa. It has our business name on the account in addition to our names. Advanta closed all accounts a few years ago but I'd been making payments on the balance until recently. But we're a sole proprietorship so it must really be issued to us personally.

[OverandDone]

Well I know I was very worried about mine but I did not default on credit cards but had a foreclosure instead. Several of my actual credit cards were canceled by the issuers because of the foreclosure but the merchant accounts never said anything. So although I can't exactly answer your question it does give some perspective.

[IOAlot]

I stopped paying 2 Amex Corp cards many months ago but still am able to process Amex cards for customers.