Payments giant Visa cuts 7pc of its workforce in AI pivot

Layoffs partially a cost-saving measure, sources told Bloomberg.

Payments giant Visa is cutting roughly 7pc of its workforce in a now familiar pivot towards AI. The layoffs translate to about 2,600 employees.

The job cuts are expected to primarily affect technology and product teams. Visa has European offices in Poland and the UK.

“To capture the opportunities ahead and best position Visa to lead this transformation, we must continue evolving how we work,” company CEO Ryan McInerney wrote in a memo to staff, parts of which were verified by multiple news organisations.

“AI is also helping to accelerate this evolution and shape the way work gets done at Visa.”

Visa’s layoffs come at a transformational moment for the tech industry, which has been rapidly evolving since generative AI’s mainstream popularity skyrocketed in recent years.

Tech leaders, including the likes of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Block’s Jack Dorsey, among several others, have shared their vision for slimmer teams powered with AI for better cost saving and added efficiency.

Fintech Block cut around 40pc of its company’s staff – or around 4,000 people – earlier this year. More recently, Microsoft announced 4,800 job cuts and the parent company behind the Reuters news agency laid off 500 engineering jobs. Even bigger layoffs, including 8,000 job cuts at Meta, were also announced in recent months.

According to technology and start-up layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi, 252 tech companies have cut more than 124,000 jobs so far in this year alone, already crossing the nearly 123,000 that were laid off in the whole of 2025.

Sources, however, told Bloomberg that AI-powered work efficiency was not the only reason behind Visa’s decision to cut jobs.

Visa intends to redirect the funds saved towards consumer payments, business and value-added services, including stablecoins, cross-border and business-to-business offerings, they added.

“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.

“As a result of the choices we have made over the past few years, we are entering a new era in commerce with a business that has real momentum,” McInerney said in the memo.

“We see this in our continued strong financial results, client satisfaction, employee engagement, and breakthrough innovation as we build and ship products better and faster than ever before.”

Net revenue at the company is up 14pc this quarter past to $11.6bn. Company shares gained more than 1pc by trading close on Tuesday (28 July), falling marginally in after-hours trading. Share prices have risen nearly 5pc over the past year.

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Ryan McInerny at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, 2025. Image: World Economic Forum via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)