Visa trims 7% of workforce as fintech belt-tightening spreads

Investing.com -- Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) shares gained 2% on Tuesday following reports that the payments behemoth plans to trim approximately 7% of its workforce.

The restructuring will eliminate roughly 2,600 roles—primarily concentrated in tech and product divisions—according to an internal memo from CEO Ryan McInerney obtained by Bloomberg. The move follows a decade of massive expansion that saw Visa’s workforce more than triple to 34,100 employees. Capital freed up by the reductions will be reinvested directly into core growth priorities, including commercial payments, cross-border flows, stablecoin infrastructure, and business-to-business solutions.

While McInerney noted in his memo that AI is "accelerating the evolution" of work across the organization, company sources emphasized that automation is far from the primary driver behind the layoffs. Instead, Visa’s restructuring aligns with broader belt-tightening across the fintech sector as legacy firms look to streamline operations after years of rapid hiring.

By comparison, competitor Block Inc. (NYSE: XYZ) recently took a far more aggressive approach when CEO Jack Dorsey slashed nearly 40% of its workforce—around 4,000 jobs—attributing the massive cuts explicitly to AI productivity gains, claiming "intelligence tools" now allow vastly smaller teams to outperform larger ones. While Block framed its drastic downsizing around an "AI-first" operating model, Visa’s more measured messaging reflects a practical reallocation of capital toward emerging payment technologies rather than a direct replacement of human workers by AI.

Visa was scheduled to report its quarterly earnings after the closing bell.

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