Visa is cutting about 2,600 jobs, about 7% of its workforce, and moving them away from the teams that build its technology. The savings go into payment systems that may one day make those instruments smaller.
The payments network confirmed the cuts Tuesday, in a staff memo from CEO Ryan McInerney that was first reported by Bloomberg. Most of the losses fall on technology and product.
The savings, Visa said, will be reinvested in consumer payments, cross-border transactions, business payments and coins.
AI is named, but not accused
McInerney put artificial intelligence into the memo, carefully. “AI is also helping to accelerate this evolution and shape the way work is done at Visa,” he wrote. Note the action. AI helps, it doesn’t decide.
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A person with direct knowledge told CNBC that AI is a key factor in the cuts, but not the only one. Technology is used to reduce repetitive work and speed up product development. That framework is now commonplace.
While Uber and Monday.com cut staff this year, they also named AI as an accelerator without letting it take all the blame. It has become the house style of AI era demolition.
Cutting the metal to finance the threat
The most revealing details are where the money goes. Visa is reducing the number of groups using the card network and targeting savings on stablecoins, cross-border transfers and business payments.
Those are the places where the card network is exposed the most. Stablecoins can transfer value between two parties without a card train in between. Agenttic payments, where software agents pay on behalf of the user, can reshape who sits between the buyer and the seller.
Visa refuses to be a part of both, and pays you by cutting people who built something they can replace.
It’s a bet, not an argument. Visa would rather own the disruption than be driven by it. But the design of the cut clearly indicates which side of his business he thinks the future lies in.
The whole industry is doing it at the same time
Visa does not go alone, or first. PayPal is laying off a fifth of its workforce. The bloc shed nearly 4,000 jobs, nearly half of its workforce, in February. Mastercard cut 4% earlier this year. Visa’s move took place about six months after its closest counterparts.
The scale is fair and balanced. The number of Visas has tripled in ten years to about 34,100, so 2,600 are the deadline instead of gutting. Analysts at Evercore ISI called it “not a material event,” just “one of the world’s best-run companies changing.”
The stock rose on the news. Visa still benefits from transaction volume rather than credit risk, which protects it from downturns.
What makes it special is not the number. That this is a healthy business, this is blocked, is still spending the engineers of its main product to chase the next one.
Reuters covered the broader trend as companies begin to translate the use of AI into workforce reductions. Visa, which reports earnings the same afternoon, has now added the most profitable name to that list.
