American Express's $700 Million Purchase of TheFork Reaches Portugal's Competition Regulator

The app that Portuguese diners open to book a table on a Friday night is about to change owners, and Portugal's competition regulator now has a say in it. The Autoridade da Concorrência (Competition Authority, or AdC) has been formally notified of American Express's agreement to buy TheFork — the restaurant-reservation platform used to book some 3,900 restaurants across Portugal — from the travel group Tripadvisor. The filing, disclosed on 11 August 2026, opens a merger review in a country where TheFork has quietly become the default way to reserve a meal out.

American Express announced the deal on 15 June 2026: it is paying roughly US$700 million (about €600 million) in cash to acquire TheFork outright. Tripadvisor keeps its core review site and its Viator experiences business; only TheFork changes hands. The companies expect to close before the end of 2026, subject to regulatory clearances in the markets where TheFork operates — which is why the paperwork has now landed at the AdC in Lisbon.

Why Portugal's regulator is involved

Merger control is about overlap, and here the overlap is small but real. American Express already owns two restaurant-booking businesses of its own — Resy, which it bought in 2019, and Tock, added in 2024 — both heavily weighted toward the United States. In its filing, the AdC notes that those services have only a "limited presence" in Europe, and in Portugal in particular. TheFork, by contrast, is the incumbent here. That asymmetry is exactly what a competition authority examines: whether a dominant local platform is being absorbed by a buyer that, while large, barely competes in the same market today.

TheFork's footprint in Portugal is substantial. Beyond the roughly 3,900 restaurants bookable through the app, 137 of them appear in the Michelin Guide — about 65% of the guide's 210 Portuguese entries — underlining how deeply the platform reaches into the higher end of the country's dining scene. Third parties who want to raise concerns with the regulator have a short window: observations must reach the AdC within ten business days of the notice.

What TheFork is, and how it makes money

TheFork began life in France in 2007 as LaFourchette, was acquired by Tripadvisor in 2014, and was rebranded under a single European name in 2020. Today it lists more than 50,000 restaurants across eleven European countries and generated about US$232 million in revenue in the year to March 2026. For diners, the app is free: you search, book and, in many cases, claim off-peak discounts of 30% to 50% or collect "Yums" loyalty points redeemable against future meals. Restaurants pay for the privilege — through commissions on covers booked and subscription fees for the reservation software — which is why the platform's pricing and terms matter to thousands of Portuguese businesses, not just to the people eating.

That dependence cuts both ways. For a small restaurant, TheFork can be the single largest source of online bookings; for the same reason, any change in commission structure after an ownership change is watched closely. This is the backdrop against which the AdC's review unfolds, at a moment when record tourism is masking a real squeeze on Portugal's restaurants and hotels.

American Express's dining play

For American Express, TheFork is the missing European piece of a strategy built around dining as a loyalty perk. Resy and Tock gave the card giant a strong position in US restaurant bookings; TheFork bolts on a continental network and, the company says, lifts its combined bookable-restaurant count to around 75,000 venues worldwide. The logic is to weave restaurant reservations into the Amex card experience — priority tables, points, curated lists — the same way airline and hotel benefits already work. Portugal, with its Michelin-heavy fine-dining boom and a tourism sector the government is now steering from volume toward value, is a natural fit for that model.

What it means for diners and restaurants in Portugal

• Nothing changes today. Until the deal closes and regulators sign off, TheFork keeps operating as it does now — same app, same bookings, same discounts. Expect no immediate disruption to reservations you have already made.
• Watch for Amex integration later. If the acquisition completes, the likeliest consumer-facing change is tighter links between TheFork and American Express cards — think card-holder perks or points — rather than a different booking experience for everyone else.
• Restaurants should read the fine print. Commission rates and subscription terms are where an ownership change tends to show up first. Independent restaurants that rely heavily on the platform may want to keep a direct-booking channel alive as a hedge.
• The regulator is the wildcard. The AdC could clear the deal quickly, attach conditions, or open a deeper investigation. Portugal is only one of several European jurisdictions reviewing it, so the timeline depends on the slowest approval, not the fastest.

The wave of dealmaking crossing the AdC's desk is not slowing — corporate takeovers in Portugal recently hit a 22-year high — and this one touches something unusually close to daily life: where and how the country eats out. For now, the tables stay booked through the same app. Whether the name behind it becomes American Express, and on what terms for the restaurants that depend on it, is a question the regulators will answer over the coming months.