Another week, another company “taking on Groupon”. This time it’s AOL – more specifically, AOL’s Patch. AOL is launching Patch Deals with a little help from American Express via its digital payment platform Serve, which will power the Patch Deals Platform.

“Our collaboration with AOL’s Patch increases the scale and reach of the Serve platform and helps bridge the divide between online commerce and offline deals in a way that benefits merchants and consumers,” said Dan Schulman, Group President, Enterprise Growth, American Express. “This partnership showcases the breadth of the capabilities of the Serve platform to make digital payments hassle-free, user-friendly and part of the norm – and now through our work with Patch, we can add locally relevant to that list.”

In the Patch Deals FAQs, we learn that:

”Through this simple yet fresh way of redeeming local deals, Patch and Serve will offer users an even stronger connection to their communities and the businesses in their area,” commented Warren Webster, president of Patch Media. “We are proud to partner with Amex given their reputation for innovation in the marketplace, and are eager to see how our collaboration may further benefit our collective consumers.”

Interestingly, AOL’s TechCrunch blog ran an article called “Why I Want Google Offers And The Entire Daily Deals Business To Die” over the weekend.

The deals space is getting more and more crowded, making those services that aggregate deals for consumers all the more valuable.

Users will be able to sign up for Serve accounts via Patch sites this fall. The Patch Deals service is already live in a few select communities.