American Express today announced a new digital payment and commerce platform called Serve. The company said the platform gives consumers a new way to spend, send and receive money.

According to the announcement, Serve lets consumers make purchases and send person-to-person (P2P) payments through the serve.com website, via mobile phones or at merchants who accept American Express cards. The service allows customers to fund a single Serve account through a bank account, debit, credit or charge card, or by receiving money from another Serve account.

The announcement also said Serve accounts can be accessed via applications on devices running Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android mobile operating systems as well as via Facebook. 

“Serve is a new type of payment platform that isn’t tied to a single card or mobile operating system. It’s a flexible, easy-to-use platform, which from day one brings tremendous assets to the alternative payments space and gives consumers an option to shop online and off-line at millions of merchants who accept American Express,” said Dan Schulman, group president, Enterprise Growth, American Express.

American Express said Serve is available immediately to anyone in the United States and is expected to launch into other international markets over the coming year.

The new service is similar to one recently announced by Visa Inc. to facilitate online and P2P money transfers, a space PayPal Inc. has dominated for many years.