For many Visa employees in India, 29 July began with an early morning email from HR that ended their jobs before the workday had started. The payments company is cutting about 2,600 roles, or 7% of its global workforce, in a restructuring it has tied to AI.
The reductions were communicated in an internal memo that CEO Ryan McInerney sent to staff on 28 July, the same day Visa reported its fiscal third-quarter earnings. The cuts fall mainly on the technology and product divisions, measured against a baseline of roughly 34,100 employees at the close of fiscal 2025.
“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,” McInerney wrote in the memo, excerpts of which Visa confirmed.
India is Visa’s largest technology hub outside the United States, and it was hit hard, though the company has not disclosed local numbers. Employees said entire teams were gutted, with the layoffs reaching engineers, managers and senior leaders who had spent more than two decades at the company. Many lost access to company systems within days, leaving Bengaluru offices unusually quiet.
The memo framed the move as efficiency and reinvestment, pointing to higher-growth areas such as cross-border payments, commercial services and stablecoin infrastructure. McInerney wrote that AI is “helping to accelerate this evolution and shape the way work gets done at Visa.” A person familiar with the decision said AI was a significant factor but not the sole driver of the reductions.
The layoffs followed a period of tightening at Visa in India. Employees said the company had already been trimming contractor hiring, cutting software vendor spending, and pushing greater use of AI tools before the job cuts. Staff were told to adopt AI, and the company later placed limits on internal AI usage as costs rose.
The cuts extend a wider round of workforce reductions across the payments and fintech sector. Mastercard announced plans earlier in 2026 to cut about 4% of its global workforce, and Block said in February it would shed roughly 4,000 positions. Through the first half of 2026, US employers announced more than 443,000 planned job cuts, with AI the most commonly cited reason.
