Visa bet its future on AI — then cut 2,600 of the engineers who build it

On 28 July 2026 Visa confirmed it would eliminate about 2,600 positions, roughly 7% of its global workforce, cutting headcount from about 34,100 to around 31,500. The news arrived the same day the payments giant was due to report fiscal third-quarter results, and it came not from a press release but from a staff memo by chief executive Ryan McInerney, first reported by Bloomberg. Visa was not in trouble: McInerney described a business with 'real momentum,' and its headcount had grown about 8% the previous year.

The cuts were concentrated in Visa's technology and product organisations — the engineering corps that designs, builds, tests and maintains the payment network — while customer-service and back-office roles were largely spared. McInerney framed the move as part of an evolution in how work gets done, saying AI was 'helping to accelerate this evolution and shape the way work gets done at Visa.' People familiar with the decision said AI was a significant factor, though not the only one; Visa said it was redirecting payroll toward AI infrastructure, stablecoin settlement and cross-border growth.

The result was a striking bet: a company cutting the people who build and run its core product while declaring that the future would be built on AI, stablecoins and new payment rails — all of which require deep engineering to deliver. Visa's argument was that AI could now automate many of those engineering tasks, so headcount could shrink even as ambition grew. Whether that trade works is the open question the layoff poses: a firm can reorganise around AI, but it cannot build the AI era with fewer builders.