Historical Actions

Visa initiated a plan to streamline its international operations in October 2024, resulting in approximately 1,400 layoffs at that time. Over two years, total layoffs exceeded 4,000, reflecting a strategic shift from "scale expansion" to "efficiency first." From 2016 to 2026, the workforce grew from about 10,000 to 34,100, a 240% increase, but the slowdown in the payment industry's growth by 2026 (global credit card transaction growth rate dropping from 15% in 2023 to 6% in 2026) forced Visa to reassess its human resource allocation.

Capital Pathway

The resource reallocation pathway is clear: moving from technology and product teams (repetitive tasks) to stablecoins, cross-border payments, and B2B payments (high-growth areas). Visa launched a stablecoin settlement network (Visa Stablecoin Settlement) in 2025, supporting stablecoins like USDC for merchant settlements on the blockchain, with stablecoin transaction volume increasing by 340% year-on-year in Q2 2026. The labor cost savings from layoffs (estimated at $150,000 per employee per year, totaling about $390 million annually) will be used to acquire stablecoin infrastructure companies and expand cross-border payment networks in emerging markets.

Comparative Analysis + Industry Position

Similar cases include PayPal laying off 2,500 employees in 2025 (9% of its workforce) and Block laying off 1,700 employees in early 2026 (10% of its workforce), all pointing towards a "fintech efficiency optimization" cycle. Visa is currently in a "traditional payment giant transformation phase"—compared to Square (focused on small and medium-sized merchants) and Stripe (focused on developer APIs), Visa's advantage lies in its global network (over 200 countries, 40 million merchants), but its disadvantage is a slower pace of innovation. The layoffs essentially represent a "streamlining of the organization" in exchange for "strategic focus," reallocating resources from low-growth businesses (traditional credit card processing) to high-growth businesses (stablecoins, B2B).

Structural Judgment

This fundamentally reflects a labor restructuring caused by technological substitution. AI and automation can now handle over 70% of Visa's repetitive tasks (such as transaction reconciliation, risk control rule updates, and product development documentation), but stablecoins and cross-border payments require a "hybrid team of humans and technology" (compliance negotiations, banking partnerships, regulatory lobbying). This explains why layoffs are concentrated in technology and product teams, while stablecoin and B2B teams are actually expanding. The labor structure in the payment industry is shifting from "engineer-intensive" to "compliance + business-intensive," reflecting that after technology matures, the ability to implement business becomes the core of competition.

ABAB News · Cognitive Laws

Efficiency optimization is a side effect of slowing growth
AI does not replace jobs, it replaces repetitiveness
Transformations of traditional giants rely on streamlining rather than expansion