Update: Some readers in the comments report that Amex cards still aren’t working at Pepper, so it sounds like this hasn’t actually been fully resolved after all.
Earlier this week, some users reported that American Express was blocking transactions from the Pepper app, but we’ve since heard that the issue with paying via Amex card has been resolved.
A few days ago, Pepper users were reportedly getting an error message when trying to buy gift cards saying that their transactions had been declined by the issuer. The problem had been limited to Amex cards and apparently all Amex cards were being declined.
On the one hand, that’s a surprising development given the fact that there was an Amex Offer for Pepper transactions that ended just a few days ago, but on the other hand it seemed like it could have been within the realm of possibility that Amex would block gift card transactions.
The good news is that we’ve since heard that the issue has been resolved and that Amex cards are once again working for purchases via Pepper. It seems like this was likely a temporary glitch that has been resolved and it seemed worth a quick alert to any readers whose transactions had been declined earlier in the week.

This might be the end.
they have stopped all communications emails phone calls. can’t relog lin. asks to call them you call email leave voice mails all day everyday but they have stopped communications. check their social media. it is full of complaints
I’m trying to make a purchase, but with any other card the message is: Internal server error
Still not working for me as well
*tried taking it off and re-adding, still no good
Amex as working fine for me on Wednesday I used my business gold to not a gc. Then it stopped working for me on Thursday I wound up having to use a Visa card that I had on file.
Still not working for me, keep getting my payment declined with 2 different messages stating:
“Your card is not supported. Please use a different card” and “invalid parameters”.
Got logged out of Pepper app and can’t log in back. It’s telling me to reset the password but no option to do so.
you need a vpn to log in from outside the country now…
Even with VPN I can’t log in because it’s asking me to reset my password but no way to do it
just different locations. Same happens to me.
Are Pepper and Amex going to re-offer the Amex Offer that expired during this “glitch”?
It’s time to photoshop the top-left part of the Pepper-app.png, multiplayer is 0X for Amazon, since it’s not available anymore (only available for the points redemption)
The glitch is back. Not working for me to purchase gc with Amex card already in Pepper wallet and cannot add Amex card to wallet.
Anyone know if the merchant code is unchanged for amex purchases at pepper? Thanks.
Yeah, not working for me either. I can’t add a card
I’ve never been able to use Amex cards. Amex claimed the issue was with Pepper, and Pepper blamed Amex. So that website is useless to me.
Mine is still not working with Amex btw.
Some apps using a different payment network are not working as of now. Half of users roughly are ok.
No fact checking at all here
I agree, and why is there no statement of exactly who (officially) has said this has been resolved…
Unfortunately been a trend lately with them. Similarly with the HGV 100k offer they posted last week when they replied to a comment saying the offer wasn’t invite only, yet 90% of comments were people saying they were ineligible and reps told them it was email invite only. They never edited it or clarified anything in the comments stating that you COULD get around it by just having them match the 100k offer through an email screenshot. Just got the clicks for the headline. Pretty disappointing as it’s such an easy edit to help others get the offer.
I just added an update. My apologies — in this case, it was another FM team member who passed the info along to me. I haven’t used the Pepper app much in a while, so I was reporting based on what a team member had passed along to me.
I hadn’t seen comments about that Hilton offer and I wasn’t aware that it had been targeted. We’ll make sure that gets fixed in the future. We do try to keep up on comments and make edits where necessary.