Mastercard to lay off 3% of employees worldwide: report

Payment services firm Mastercard will be laying off three per cent of its employees worldwide, according to Bloomberg.

A spokesperson from the multinational firm said they are carrying out the layoffs to accelerate growth.

"We recently announced organisational changes, realigning the regions and businesses to accelerate growth and unlock capacity that will enable investment in long-term opportunities," the spokesperson told Bloomberg.

Mastercard employed about 33,400 individuals globally as of December 2023, according to its latest annual report. Among them, roughly 67% are based outside the US in more than 90 countries.

This means a three per cent layoff will likely see around 1,000 employees impacted. According to Bloomberg's report, most of the employees who will be affected by the job cuts will be informed before September 30.

The layoffs at the multinational payment services firm come despite net revenue growing by 11% to $7 billion in Q2.

"We delivered another strong quarter across all aspects of our business with double-digit net revenue and earnings growth," said CEO Michael Miebach in the company's Second Quarter 2024 Financial Results.

"This was supported by continued healthy consumer spending, robust cross-border volume growth of 17%, and demand for our value-added services and solutions where net revenue increased 18%, or 19% on a currency-neutral basis. These results reflect how payments and services enable each other to create differentiated value for our customers and help us realize even more of the shift to digital."

Mastercard joins the growing list of employers that are laying off employees this year, including Intel, Tesla, Cisco, Indeed, Citigroup, among others.