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The global fintech sector has recorded at least 9,706 job cuts in 2026 so far, making it the fifth most affected segment of the technology industry this year as companies accelerate artificial intelligence adoption and restructure operations in pursuit of sustainable profitability.
The figures come from a report by financial research platform TradingPlatforms, which found total tech industry layoffs have reached 132,393 in the same period, with cloud and software-as-a-service providers, e-commerce, IT services and enterprise software all recording heavier losses than fintech.
Oracle has cut 25,000 roles, Amazon 16,600 and Cognizant about 15,000.
However, the report warns that the fintech sector is now at the sharp end of a wave of layoffs that shows no signs of slowing, led by PayPal which is set to eliminate around 20 per cent of its nearly 24,000-strong workforce over the next three years and Coinbase cutting 14 per cent of staff in a shift toward smaller, AI-augmented teams.
Tax software maker Intuit has cut around 3,000 jobs, while San Francisco-based payments group Block has made the most aggressive single move, slashing 4,000 roles from a workforce of 10,205 - close to half its headcount.
The United States remains the global epicentre of fintech layoffs in 2026, driven by aggressive AI adoption and operational restructuring across the sector.
The latest major announcement came from fintech software company Intuit, which cut around 3,000 jobs as the company continues to grow through heavy investment in AI-powered financial software and automation tools.
"The fintech sector is going through a significant period of change," says TradingPlatforms analyst Stanislava Savisheva.
"For years, companies overhired to match user growth and funding rounds rather than revenue, and investors are now demanding a clearer path to profitability.
"That is pushing firms of all sizes to take a harder look at their cost base.
"But this isn’t simply a market correction; a growing share of these cuts is attributed to automation and artificial intelligence, aiming at cost-cutting across customer service, compliance and back-office functions.
"The honest picture is that both forces are at work simultaneously, and in some cases, it is difficult to tell where financial pressure ends and structural change begins."
Savisheva says the sector now looks "very different from where it stood three or four years ago", adding that the workforce is bearing most of the cost of this transition.
The pattern across fintech mirrors a broader recalibration in the technology sector, where companies that hired aggressively during the low-interest-rate expansion of 2020 and 2021 are now compressing headcounts while redirecting capital toward AI infrastructure and automation tools designed to deliver higher output from leaner teams.
Globally, cloud and SaaS (software as a service) companies have recorded the highest number of AI-related layoffs in 2026, with 31,180 job cuts across the sector, heavily driven by Oracle’s 25,000 layoffs.
E-commerce and marketplace companies rank second with 20,627 layoffs, the vast majority stemming from Amazon and its 16,600 workforce reductions as automation reshapes fulfilment, logistics, and operational planning.
Meanwhile, the IT services sector has recorded 16,706 layoffs globally, overwhelmingly led by Cognizant, which is eliminating around 15,000 roles as part of a broader shift away from labour-intensive outsourcing towards smaller, more AI-assisted delivery teams.
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