00:00Visa is cutting about 2,600 jobs, roughly 7% of its workforce.
00:04The payments giant is looking to streamline operations and reinvest in areas including AI,
00:10stablecoins, and cross-border payments.
00:12For more, Bloomberg Consumer Finance reporter Paige Smith joins us now.
00:16Those are broad levels, some of the justifications they gave.
00:19What exactly is Visa doing here?
00:21I think substantively it comes down to this moment in time where the payments industry
00:25is really dynamic and evolving very quickly.
00:28And there are a number of firms basically trying to make tough decisions about how to allocate
00:34their capital and where to really substantively make those investments.
00:38And according to the memo that we obtained, Visa called out some really high-growth opportunities
00:46for them to really allocate their people to sort of reinvest some of those savings, I suppose.
00:51Those are areas like stablecoin technology, agentic commerce, and also just growing and
00:57evolving consumer payments that we rely on every day.
01:00What are the low-growing areas then that they're backing away from?
01:03I think it would be fair to say that it's a competitive dynamic, right?
01:08So these are sort of internal deliberations about where it would be most valuable to invest.
01:15So they, like a lot of companies in recent days, including PayPal and Block, you talk about
01:21in your report, have kind of said, oh, we're using a lot of AI, and so we're becoming more
01:25efficient.
01:26I mean, it must be difficult for you, but how is a reporter, do you kind of distinguish
01:29what is sort of the AI theater and what is true productivity gains that means they need
01:33fewer workers?
01:34I mean, I'll speak for myself personally.
01:37When I look at these firms, it's sort of, I look at, first of all, just how mature they
01:42are as entities and also the ways that they have historically talked about AI.
01:48So you talk about a company like Visa where they have spoken about how they've used artificial
01:53intelligence and fraud and security capabilities for years and years.
01:57And I, to be totally frank, I don't think that all companies have been using that kind of
02:03language as they've spoken with reporters and with the public generally.
Comments