Visa layoffs 2026: company cuts 2,600 roles to fund payments push

Visa layoffs 2026 will remove about 2,600 positions, equal to roughly 7% of the company’s workforce, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing an internal memo from Chief Executive Ryan McInerney. The reductions are concentrated in technology and product teams and are intended to free investment for consumer payments, commercial and money movement products, and value-added services including stablecoin, cross-border and B2B offerings, according to the report.

Visa confirmed the accuracy of Bloomberg’s report when contacted by PYMNTS. The company is scheduled to publish fiscal third-quarter results after the market close on Tuesday.

In the memo cited by Bloomberg, McInerney said he had “deep conviction” that the company was acting in the interests of Visa, its clients and its partners while seeking efficiency and redirecting resources toward its highest-potential opportunities.

Bloomberg reported that artificial intelligence helped make the reductions possible by cutting repetitive work and speeding up product development. McInerney said in the staff memo that AI is changing “the way work gets done at Visa,” according to the report.

Why is Visa cutting jobs in 2026?

The company is reducing staff to shift capital and management focus toward parts of the business it sees as higher-growth, including stablecoin settlement, cross-border payments, commercial payments and business-to-business services, according to Bloomberg’s account of the memo. That approach links cost control in technology and product teams with further investment in payment infrastructure and software-led services.

Stablecoin settlement, in Visa’s current strategy, refers to using stablecoin and blockchain infrastructure as part of payment flows. On its April earnings call, McInerney said stablecoins and blockchain represented “significant opportunities” and described Visa as an interoperability layer between that infrastructure and real-world user services, PYMNTS reported at the time.

Visa’s recent product moves have been consistent with that emphasis. Since the April call, the company has added five more blockchains to its global stablecoin settlement pilot, expanded its Agentic Ready payments program to clients in Latin America and Asia-Pacific, and broadened its Commercial Solutions Hub to support issuer and supplier virtual card programs, according to PYMNTS.

Visa has also partnered with OpenAI to help developers and merchants accept Visa payments initiated by AI agents, PYMNTS reported. The initiative sits alongside the company’s broader work on AI-driven commerce, where software agents can be used to initiate or support transactions.

The latest reductions follow an earlier round reported in October 2024, when Visa was said to be cutting 1,400 employees and contractors, including about 1,000 technology roles, as part of an effort to streamline its international business. At that time, the company had more than 30,000 employees worldwide, according to PYMNTS.

Investors will receive more detail on Visa’s operating performance when the company releases its third-quarter financial results. On its previous earnings call in April, Visa reported continued support from card spending while discussing expansion in stablecoins, blockchain and AI-enabled commerce, PYMNTS reported.

This story draws on original reporting from PYMNTS.