George Waters Net Worth

George Waters Net Worth is
$1.7 Million

George Waters Bio/Wiki, Net Worth, Married 2018

George Waters (1916–2003) was a pioneer in the credit card industry who is credited with transforming the American Express Card into a global brand and the flagship product of the American Express Company. Upon his retirement from American Express in 1980, Waters was bestowed with the title, “Father of the American Express Card.”George Waters graduated from the Indiana University in 1938 and was hired by IBM in its sales and marketing program. During World War II, he joined the Army Air Forces where he served as Deputy Chief of Staff in the Office of Statistical Control. During the war, Waters led a team that used some of the earliest computers to keep track of planes, the weather and results of combat missions. Many noted postwar executives came out of the Office of Statistical Command, including Robert S. McNamara and others who became known as the Whiz Kids.After the war, Waters served as the President of the Massachusetts Steamship Authority, a ferry service between Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Waters eventually sold the business to the State of Massachusetts. He went on to become an Executive Vice President in charge of marketing at Colonial Stores, an Atlanta based supermarket chain.American Express entered the credit card industry in 1958 with its own product, a purple charge card for travel and entertainment expenses. By the time Waters was hired in 1961, The American Express Card was number two in the industry behind Diners Club, still unprofitable, and management was unsure about what to do with the business. They considered merging with Diners Club and also forming a joint venture with Hilton Hotels. The Card at that time was primarily accepted in restaurants, as hotels, car rental companies and airlines were either reluctant to accept credit cards or issued their own cards.Soon after his arrival in 1961, Waters recognized several problems. The division had grown so fast that internal controls for monitoring card activity and service establishment payments were weak. Too many card members were not paying their bills on time and the company was not charging enough relative to the services that it was providing to their card members and service establishments. Waters plan for reviving the business was based on positioning the card as a product that was not for everyone. He teamed up with mathematicians at MIT to develop algorithms to track card spending activity which avoided the need for credit limits and allowed card members to establish their own responsible spending patterns. Drawing on his Air Force computer experience, he installed a data processing system that kept track of card activity and improved accounting controls. Next, he terminated card members who were not paying their bills on time – approximately 1/3 of the card base. He then raised the annual card fee to $8.00 from $6.00 and he raised the discount rate - the percentage of the sale that the service establishments had to pay American Express – from 3% to 7 

Known for movies