Visa layoffs: Senior executives earning up to ₹4.36 crore among 2,600 employees affected

Visa's latest round of artificial intelligence-fuelled layoffs, affecting nearly 2,600 employees, has extended well beyond junior and mid-level employees. In the wee hours of July 29, several employees woke up to emails from the human resources team informing them that their jobs had been cut as the payments giant restructures its operations to focus on artificial intelligence.

Layoffs extend to senior leadership

A lay-off notice filed in California shows that Visa's latest job cuts at its Foster City headquarters have affected vice presidents, senior directors and senior technical employees.

A WARN notice filed on July 31, shows that Visa is laying off 320 employees at its Foster City headquarters, with the job cuts spanning multiple business functions rather than a single department.

The filing says the layoffs include six vice presidents, 37 senior directors and 16 chief engineering and architect roles. It also affects several senior software engineers, researchers and other experienced technical professionals, indicating that the restructuring is impacting both leadership and engineering teams.

According to a report by SFGATE, LinkedIn job postings from three months ago showed that Visa was offering vice president roles at its Foster City office with annual salaries ranging from $235,700 to $458,000 ( ₹2.24 crore to ₹4.36 crore).

Bloomberg had earlier reported that Visa planned to cut about 7% of its global workforce. The company confirmed the figure to SFGATE but declined to comment on the details of the layoffs in California.

CEO says AI is changing the way work gets done

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ryan McInerney told employees that the reductions were aimed at improving efficiency.

McInerney said during an earnings call on 28 July that AI is changing how work gets done at Visa.

“Today, we announced that we are eliminating roles, with the majority being in our technology and product teams, to ensure that we are continuing to position Visa for future growth,” the CEO said. “Now, as we enter the era of agentic AI, we are going beyond AI assistance and harnessing the power of AI to execute work and tasks with our supervision.”

What is agentic commerce?

Visa said agentic commerce—where autonomous AI agents research, compare, negotiate and make purchases on behalf of consumers—will help expand the company's market and fuel future growth.

The company did not disclose how many of the eliminated roles would be in India, its largest technology hub outside the US. Visa's global workforce grew by about 8% to around 34,100 employees in fiscal 2025. While it has not revealed its current India headcount, the company said in 2024 that it employed more than 3,500 people in the country.