Visa announced it will be cutting its global workforce by 2,600 jobs and felt the brunt in costs following its Q3 quarterly results.
Visa is set to cut its global workforce down by 7%, or 2,600 jobs, to pivot to AI automated workloads to mitigate repetitive labour patterns and increase productivity.
In a memo seen by Bloomberg, Visa CEO, Ryan McInerney told staff on 28 July it will focus on boosting efficiency throughout its workforce while investing in AI in which it was labelled by McInerney as one of Visa’s “highest potential opportunities”.
“I have deep conviction that we are doing what is right for Visa, our clients and our partners as we continue to focus on driving efficiency across the company in order to reinvest in our highest potential opportunities,” said McInereney in the memo.
Layoffs in the payments and financial sector as a result of AI productivity have increased in the last several years as large language models and generative AI become more sophisticated to handle manual human labour.
Block, parent company of Square and Cash App, made the most significant job cuts in recent years, laying off 40% of its workforce from 10,000 to 6,000 jobs in February 2026.
Mastercard reduced its headcount by 4% in January 2026 citing similar reasons to its competitor, PayPal axed 20% of its staff in a broader corporate overhaul that utilised AI to adjust operating costs, as well as Stripe cutting up to 1,100 jobs due to similar circumstances.
As of the end of 2025, Visa had just over 34,000 employees.
“To capture the opportunities ahead and best position Visa to lead this transformation, we must continue evolving how we work,” said McInerney. “AI is also helping to accelerate this evolution and shape the way work gets done at Visa.”
AI acting as Visa’s growth enabler
Much like the rest of the industry, Visa has invested significantly into AI to develop products and services built for the future of payments.
According to a person familiar with the matter, cited by Bloomberg, Visa intends to continue to reinvest into its consumer payments, money movement solutions and value-added services by utilising AI.
At the Visa Payments Forum (2 July), Visa announced the next step in its agentic payment strategy, opening its Visa Intelligence Commerce and Visa Passkey solutions to more of its global merchants for users to make payments by discovering them via AI chatbots.
Speaking to Payment Expert at the Visa Payment Forum, Mehret Habteab, SVP of Platform and Product Management at Visa, said the rollout of more agentic payment solutions are necessary for clients to be prepared for agentic commerce.
“(Clients) are curious about it and wherever it goes, they want to be in a position where they’re ready for it, and there’s some foundational technologies that they need to be able to support in order to secure payments in the agentic space,” said Habteab.
“That’s what we’re helping them get ready for.”
The cost of cutting jobs
Within its recent Q3’ 2026 financial results, Visa revealed the layoffs to 7% of its workforce has cost the company $563m.
Visa revenue for Q3 was $11.6bn, a 14% increase year-over-year while spending on the Visa network also grew by 10% from the year prior. Cross-border volume increased 13%.
