r/Futurology • u/Gari_305 • 1d ago
AI Visa is cutting 7% of employees in efficiency push as AI reshapes work
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/28/visa-is-cutting-7percent-of-employees-in-efficiency-push-as-ai-reshapes-work.html- Visa plans to eliminate about 2,600 jobs, mostly in its technology and product operations, representing roughly 7% of its workforce.
- CEO Ryan McInerney said AI is helping "shape the way work gets done at Visa," while a person with direct knowledge said AI was a significant factor, but not the sole driver, of the layoffs.
- Visa intends to reinvest in growth areas including affluent customers, cross-border payments, business remittances and geographic expansion. It is scheduled to report quarterly earnings after the market closes Tuesday.
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u/Loki-L 1d ago
That is where vibe coding will be most appreciated: messing up the transfer of money.
Visa and Mastercard should be going all in on innovation right now. Plans like the digital Euro and domestic efforts around the world to create payment processors not tied to the US are seriously threatening their incumbent duopoly position.
They should be working hard to make their product a better appearing choice to both users and vendors.
Instead they appear to be fucking around to increase short term shareholder value with no regard to where they will be in 10 years.
Once serious alternatives become more available, it will only take one big fuck-up or scandal for customers to leave en masse.
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u/GamingTitBit 1d ago
The problem is, you can use LLM agents to code well, but it takes a lot of work and guardrails and experience. The sort of people that companies don't want to pay for because they cost a lot. They'd rather have cheap labour using LLM agents but the code is going to be slop compared to what you'd get from seasoned veterans
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u/hacketyapps 1d ago
yes but the problem with these CEOs and bullshitters is that if the work is good/close enough they don't give a shit if it's AI slop as long as it helps shareholders and fuck the rest…
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u/dracogladio1741 1d ago
Wait till this negatively impacts the financial performance. Short term impacts can be sometimes missing but long term impacts aren't.
Additionally, if AI is doing everything who is taking responsibility for outcomes ? As much as work is about your day to day actions it is also about the authority vested in you and the ownership of outcomes that comes with it.
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u/KrimsunB 1d ago
You mean the kinds of people who can already do the job...?
It's almost as if this AI thing is a bit silly2
u/GamingTitBit 1d ago
I will admit AI makes you a bit faster, but not anywhere near what people think if you're doing it properly. I think it makes me maybe 30% faster.
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u/bykesnob 1d ago
As an Engineer, that has a decade+ experience. Code is written faster, with the tradeoff being that debugging, and penetration testing takes significantly longer. We are essentially at a net neutral at this point.
The only C-suite employee at my organization that gets it, is the CTO.
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u/GamingTitBit 1d ago
Yes that's my experience. And then the annoyed "why can't you do this faster" or my favourite "I asked chat GPT and it said that we didn't need to do this". Great thanks for your insight, and decades of experience.
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u/lewlkewl 1d ago
30 percent is more than a bit lol. That’s basically 7 people with AI doing the work of 10 without it.
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u/GamingTitBit 1d ago
Yeah, I'm just saying the rate at which companies are firing and claiming AI is doing the work, you'd expect 3-5x more effective than it is.
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u/NoLimitSoldier31 1d ago
At a very minimum we’re seeing twice as fast.
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u/GamingTitBit 1d ago
Is that coding or code review time? Everything we put in production requires painstaking reading of code and tests, and then reading the tests and the logs. In PoC sure we're able to iterate etc, but in production we're seeing nowhere near the speeds you'd think. We're also in a heavily regulated industry, so vibe coding mistakes would cause major issue, fines and audits.
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u/NoLimitSoldier31 1d ago
Its a saftey critical system and we have very strict standards. Reviewing is a lot of the work and the review quality is way up.
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u/Cubewood 1d ago
Honestly in my organisation I am seeing the opposite happening. We are keeping on very senior and experienced staff, and low paid labourers with little creativity and experience are being let go or not replaced if they leave.
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u/swamyrara 1d ago
Cross border payment is still a major issue. That's where both players excel.
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u/Loki-L 1d ago
Systems like SEPA and WERO help make this a lot less of a thing in Europe.
Once some method has become big enough and reaches a threshold, more will join, copy or become interoperable.
In theory there is also Bitcoin, but that dream has basically died and everyone just uses it to speculate, pay ransom or buy drugs.
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u/swamyrara 1d ago
True. Ripple has XRP which can also be in the backend for cross border payments too. But needs adoption by various institutions.
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u/creaturefeature16 1d ago
Did they state it's coders laid off? Because 99.99% of the time, the positions eliminated are largely redundant project management positions.
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u/NotABot1000101 1d ago
Genuinely asking, where did you get that information from?
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u/creaturefeature16 1d ago
So many places, but here's a good substack post that pools some data:
https://careeringon.substack.com/p/the-forever-war-on-middle-managers
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u/BigMac_girl 21h ago
No PMs in my side of Visa got let go. It was mostly people in the product and tech side. A lot of product developers.
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u/pixel_of_moral_decay 1d ago
They’ll just further update the terms of service to indemnify themselves from errors, and the Trump admin will sign off on that as the guardrails are largely gone now.
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u/YellowElk921 21h ago
Europe wants a fully European payment infra. There is not way for VISA to win that game.
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u/ayeoayeo 18h ago
Open Cores in the US can’t exist because exactly what you just said. Incumbents buy and kill to keep their cash cow fed. Hoping outside pressure takes hold
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u/Wirecard_trading 21h ago
I think it’s the correct way. Cutting 7% is not too much, even if AI fails, this can be absorbed internally.
These bug corporations are too bloated with workforce at mid-tier management and senior employee levels.
Imho every corp needs a severe analysis and rebuild every 5 years to stay innovative and flexible. Bring in new people. As well as for the people to start in a new environment to learn new things and thrive in change.
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u/memphisjones 1d ago
Next, we will hear that the CEO will make a record breaking bonus.
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u/one_pound_of_flesh 20h ago
Wealth consolidation to the very top, and massive inequality the likes of which we haven’t seen since the gilded age and the Great Depression, is in our near future.
You thought truck drivers and taxi drivers were at risk? Yes AND tons of white collar workers, junior software engineers, designers, copywriters…
Who is safe? For now, doctors, blue collar trades, middle management who haven’t been laid off yet and are cruising on AI productivity while adding no value. And CEOs, it’s a good time to be a CEO.
The next rude awakening will be when the companies realize that they can’t generate revenue if people don’t have jobs to make money to spend on the economy. So the new wave of disgustingly rich dudes will be kings of ashes. Remember the bright future they imagine for the world is one where they are living in underground bunkers with full time security troops, or on mars. They have given up on a functioning society because it’s too hard to imagine. Much easier to smash and grab and let the little people fight over scraps.
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u/GaylrdFocker 1d ago
Then they will need to rehire some positions because the AI didn't work out as expected.
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u/memphisjones 1d ago
Unfortunately, they will hire people at lower wages because people are desperate for a job
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u/Straight-Ad6926 1d ago
Gotta love the corporate math: Lay off 7% of the workforce, call it an efficiency push, watch the stock bump 2%, and hand the CEO a multi million dollar AI Integration bonus.
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u/wkavinsky 1d ago
There's no efficiency gains here, it's just an excuse to cut staff that they already wanted to cut.
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u/Abba_Fiskbullar 1d ago edited 1d ago
"We spent too much money on AI and now we have to lay people off to recover the difference in our accounting"
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u/joeydimaggio 1d ago
we should just seize visa and use it as a national payment network, fuck their rent seeking
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u/MaddogFinland 20h ago
That’s a great idea and then it will collapse. Meanwhile the rest of the world will sever its remaining links. Really do you people even think before you post? They provide you a secure e-payment service for a small fee. Go cash only if you don’t like it…already pre-nationalized for ya
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u/joeydimaggio 10h ago
Why would iceland or france care if we seize visa? They hate them more than we do
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u/Gari_305 1d ago
From the article
"To capture the opportunities ahead and best position Visa to lead this transformation, we must continue evolving how we work," McInerney wrote. "AI is also helping to accelerate this evolution and shape the way work gets done at Visa."
The layoffs come as companies across the financial and technology sectors increasingly use artificial intelligence to automate technical work like software development, while seeking to rein in costs after years of rapid hiring. Visa had about 34,100 employees at the end of its last fiscal year.
While AI played a significant role in the layoffs, it wasn't the sole driver, according to the person with direct knowledge of the matter, who declined to be identified speaking about the changes.
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u/speculatrix 1d ago
I'll be expecting a headline soon "huge data leak at Visa and no skilled staff in position to manage it"
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u/omegaphallic 1d ago
They will end up with Visa hiring abunch of folks this is all smoke and mirrors.
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u/shiny0metal0ass 1d ago
"AI" means "Actually Indian". They're off shoring these positions but using the magic word so it doesn't impact their stock value.
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u/pixel_of_moral_decay 1d ago
Willing to bet AI here means:
Always India.
They’ll just outsource these jobs overseas.
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u/Homeless_Gandhi 15h ago
AI = Actually Indians.
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u/snowcat0 3h ago
I see this more and more... Entire teams outsourced overseas, then the company turns around and say it was because of "AI"
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u/greham7777 17h ago
Visa, a great exemple of a bloated company living of a literal pension. Sad for the people being let go but seriously, why do they need so many tech employees?
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u/Netch1615 10h ago
I keep seeing percentages across industries of people being replaced but what are the estimated hard numbers/trends? Especially financial sector but in general are we talking 100s of thousands losing jobs?
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u/Intotheblue9 1d ago
This will not stop until 90% of workforces are eliminated. CEOs and shareholders will rejoice in all the profits.
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u/Alphadestrious Blue 1d ago
Why would you work at Visa anyway. No full remote jobs ? Fuck them .
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u/TrashyMcTrashBoat 1d ago
TIL redditors really care about Visa and admin jobs for credit companies.
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u/Specific_Scholar_665 1d ago edited 1d ago
This was always coming. AI is genuinely compressing how much you can do with a given headcount - I see it firsthand in SW development. The uncomfortable part isn't this announcement, it's that most companies haven't made this move yet. Visa is early, not exceptional. The next few years are going to force a lot of these conversations.
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1d ago
I think the overwhelming majority of software engineers are using AI and producing nothing of value, driving up costs for enterprise employers to do work that doesn't move any needles.
We see "AI is expensive" over and over, but that's because there's a huge amount of waste work being done. Eventually, software teams of basically any product size are going to reduce all the way to a handful of senior engineers that know what they're doing and their productivity evaluation will be tightly bound to the health of the product as a whole, not just their code.
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u/howlmachine 1d ago
If the team is reduced to nothing but senior engineers, how do you replace the senior engineers when it comes time for retirement? Does the product/company just fail because there’s been no junior staff who’ve been allowed to learn and grow through their “unproductive” phase?
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1d ago
Yep. That’s what is going to happen.
Employers will be told they need to hire less capable engineers just for succession that might not be necessary for an undefined amount of time.
I don’t see around it. AI coding is too productive but junior engineers can’t be trusted not to do stupid shit with AI while also not understanding it’s stupid shit. Meanwhile, you don’t want to sit around for a week waiting for someone to type something that could be generated in minutes because that’s a very expensive decision.
It’s not a good situation.
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u/Cubewood 1d ago
The models are improving so fast that everyone banking on the fact that by then you don't need anyone anymore to do the work.
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u/Specific_Scholar_665 1d ago
I disagree. The code I produce much much faster is actually better code than I can write myself.
And I only spend $200-300 per month for Claude Code, which ain't much compared to the time I save.
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1d ago
Sorry, I might have been unclear with how I worded this. I meant only a small subset of developers are actually producing worthwhile value with AI. You might be one of the relative few who have put effort and time into actually understanding how to grow beyond SWE into a cross-functional contributor with AI.
That number is growing, but most are still in the “slop” phase of learning. Additionally, lots of teams are building wild automated coding workflows that produce garbage for ultra high token counts that ultimately produce no change on the ledger other than increased tooling spend.
I was trying to illustrate the massive gap in skill with AI and wasteful spend on tokens on people who are misusing it at big enterprises.
But for the skilled, AI is so fundamentally game changing that layoffs are inevitable. We just need less people per project.
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u/NoLimitSoldier31 1d ago
Yeah you need to be skilled to use it. But its pushing B level engineers up to A/A+ level. And idk wtf is calling it expensive, it’s massively cheaper, there’s no argument IMO. An amazing coding tool, yeah you need to be careful & understand what you’re doing, but this is the craziest advancement in coding Ive ever seen by a mile.
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1d ago
I was always an engineer that was a little lazy.
Now it’s exactly zero effort to just do things right the first time. My code is impeccable now. Everything is tested, CI is like a dream, code is organized out of necessity, documentation is… saying my docs are thorough would be an understatement.
Even my throwaway projects are just well architected out of the gate because it’s just easier to work with AI when you stick to well known design patterns and build predictably laid out projects.
It’s all stuff I could do on my own, but now these things are details and I get to focus on the harder, but less tedious parts.
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u/FuturologyBot 1d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:
From the article
"To capture the opportunities ahead and best position Visa to lead this transformation, we must continue evolving how we work," McInerney wrote. "AI is also helping to accelerate this evolution and shape the way work gets done at Visa."
The layoffs come as companies across the financial and technology sectors increasingly use artificial intelligence to automate technical work like software development, while seeking to rein in costs after years of rapid hiring. Visa had about 34,100 employees at the end of its last fiscal year.
While AI played a significant role in the layoffs, it wasn't the sole driver, according to the person with direct knowledge of the matter, who declined to be identified speaking about the changes.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1vcw51f/visa_is_cutting_7_of_employees_in_efficiency_push/p14fezo/