Some people are leaving home without it, because many vendors won’t accept it.

That’s what credit-card industry observers are saying about the American Express card. Once the gold standard of charge cards, it now faces increased competition, the loss of some big customers, fee complaints from small merchants and a court battle.

“It’s been a tough year for them,” said Bill Hardekopf, who runs LowCards.com, which reports on the industry.

Costco, which had a co-branding deal with AmEx, recently terminated the exclusive agreement. Another deal with JetBlue also ended.

Slowing profits this year led AmEx to lay off 4,000 workers. And vendors object to pricey interchange fees they pay to have AmEx in their stores.

“Many small vendors are not using American Express,” Hardekopf said.

Industry analysts say the interchange fee is about 10 percent higher than similar cards offered by Visa and MasterCard. An AmEx spokeswoman insisted that “there is essentially no difference between our weighted average discount and theirs in the US today.”

Also, American Express lost its President Ed Gilligan on Friday, when he died during a flight from Tokyo to New York.

Gilligan, 55, widely seen as the successor to CEO Ken Chenault, was a 35-year veteran of the credit-card company.