There is no shortage of contradictory headlines about the wider employment market. One week, a major payments company announces redundancies. The next, a growing FinTech raises funding and begins building teams across several countries. Some businesses are restricting recruitment, while others still cannot find the specialist people they need. Artificial intelligence is expected to remove certain roles, but it is also creating demand for entirely new combinations of skills.
So, is the payments employment market growing or contracting? The answer is that it is doing both.
Across the UK, Europe and the US, payments and FinTech businesses are becoming much more selective about where they add headcount. The volume-hiring environment may have disappeared, but competition for people who combine payments knowledge with technology, regulation, product expertise or commercial impact remains extremely strong.
A slower market does not make every candidate easier to find:
It is tempting to assume that redundancies and lower vacancy numbers must have solved the talent shortage. They haven’t. A slower market can increase the number of applications received, but that is not the same as increasing the supply of genuinely suitable candidates.
A business looking for a general salesperson, project manager or software engineer may now receive way more applications than it would have two years ago. But if it needs someone who has sold complex payment technology into enterprise merchants, managed an acquiring integration, built a payment-orchestration product or led fraud operations across multiple markets, the relevant pool remains considerably smaller.
The question is no longer simply whether candidates are available - it's whether they possess the exact combination of sector knowledge, technical understanding and commercial judgement the role requires.
The UK - cautious hiring alongside a long-term skills shortage:
The wider UK employment market remains restrained. The Office for National Statistics reported that vacancies decreased by 0.8% to 707,000 during May to July 2026, although they have remained broadly flat since the start of the year. Smaller employers in particular cited increased employment costs and other operating expenses as reasons for not recruiting.
Source: ONS UK Labour Market Data
That caution is evident across FinTech. New positions increasingly need to be connected directly to revenue generation, regulatory necessity, customer delivery, platform resilience or a strategically important product. However, the longer-term picture looks very different.
A recent Skills England and HM Treasury assessment projects that demand across ten priority financial-services occupations will grow by approximately 130,000 people between 2025 and 2035. When the estimated 185,000 people who will need to be replaced are included, total demand reaches around 315,000 workers.
Half of the identified priority occupations are already considered to be in critical demand, with 70% in either critical or elevated demand. Software development alone is projected to require another 61,600 people within financial services.
Source: Skills England Financial Services Assessment
Financial services is also competing against technology, life sciences and other industries for many of the same software developers, architects, systems specialists and technology leaders. For payments employers, this creates an important distinction: overall hiring may be cautious, but the strongest candidates in critical specialist areas are not automatically easier or cheaper to secure.
If you are planning a UK payments hire and are unsure whether the salary, location or experience requirements are realistic, I’m always happy to provide an initial view of the market before you begin the search.
Europe - a stable market with significant differences between countries:
The European picture is similarly mixed. The EU job-vacancy rate stood at 2.1% in the first quarter of 2026, unchanged from the previous quarter and slightly below the equivalent period in 2025. The euro-area rate increased marginally to 2.3%.
However, the regional differences are significant. Vacancy rates ranged from 4% in the Netherlands and 3.4% in Belgium to 0.9% in Spain and 0.8% in Poland. Malta, an important location for payments, gaming and financial-services businesses, recorded a rate of 3.3%.
This is why a single “European salary” or “European talent market” rarely provides an adequate basis for recruitment planning. Hiring conditions, salaries, employment costs and candidate expectations differ substantially between London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, Dublin, Madrid, Malta and the rapidly growing technology centres of Central and Eastern Europe.
Remote and cross-border recruitment can give employers access to a much larger talent pool, but it does not remove the need to understand local compensation, tax, employment law and cultural expectations. The best European hiring strategies therefore begin by deciding which aspects of a role genuinely require physical proximity and which can be delivered successfully from elsewhere.
Instead of asking whether a position is remote or office-based, businesses should ask: How frequently does this person genuinely need to be in a particular location? That question can open a search to an entire country or region without removing the benefits of periodic face-to-face collaboration.
For businesses recruiting across Europe, deciding where to locate a role can significantly affect the available talent pool and expected salary. If you are comparing different European markets, I can help you understand where the relevant payments experience is concentrated and how compensation differs by location.
The US - restructuring does not mean recruitment has stopped:
The US provides perhaps the clearest example of selective hiring. Visa announced plans in July 2026 to reduce its workforce by approximately 2,600 people, primarily affecting technology and product teams. Mastercard and Block have also announced significant workforce changes.
Yet these businesses are not withdrawing from innovation. They are changing how they allocate people and investment, with greater attention being directed towards artificial intelligence, automation and higher-growth opportunities.
Source: Reuters Reporting on Visa’s Restructuring
At the same time, global payments and FinTech job postings increased from 106,656 in March to 109,387 in April 2026, suggesting that recruitment activity was beginning to improve even while major redundancies continued to attract attention.
Source: Global Payments and FinTech Job-Posting Analysis
These trends are not necessarily contradictory. Large established businesses may reduce teams, remove duplicated positions or automate repetitive work. Meanwhile, scale-ups, infrastructure providers and businesses entering new markets still require people capable of building products, winning customers, managing risk and creating partnerships.
The US market is also particularly demanding when businesses need experienced enterprise salespeople. A new entrant may be competing against established employers offering strong base salaries, uncapped commission, equity and recognisable brands.
Simply recruiting someone who has worked in payments is not enough. US expansion typically requires individuals with the right buyer relationships, a credible track record in long and complex sales cycles, and the resilience to introduce a less-established proposition into a competitive market.
I’m currently supporting and building relationships with payments businesses across the US. If you are entering the market or building a US team, I’d be happy to share an honest assessment of the available talent, likely compensation and the profiles most likely to succeed.
AI is changing the skills required, not simply eliminating jobs!
Artificial intelligence sits at the centre of much of this change. The common assumption is that AI will reduce the number of people businesses need. In some functions, it almost certainly will. Repetitive tasks, basic administration and certain forms of analysis are increasingly being automated.
But European Central Bank research presents a more nuanced picture - its analysis of approximately 5,000 European businesses found that companies making significant use of AI were around 4% more likely to add staff. Businesses investing directly in AI were nearly 2% more likely to hire than those that did not.
Source: ECB Analysis of AI and European Hiring
The roles being created may not carry “AI” in their job titles. Payments companies will need:
- Product leaders who understand how AI can be incorporated into payment journeys.
- Fraud specialists who can challenge and govern automated decision-making.
- Risk and compliance leaders capable of applying appropriate controls.
- Engineers who understand payments architecture as well as AI-enabled development.
- Commercial leaders who can translate technical capability into a customer proposition.
- Senior executives who can make investment decisions without treating AI as either a magic solution or an existential threat.
The greatest shortage may therefore not be pure AI expertise. It may be people who combine AI understanding with credible payments experience and strong commercial or regulatory judgement.
What does this mean for hiring managers?
The current market should give employers more choice, but it should not encourage complacency. Strong candidates are still likely to have several options, particularly when their expertise sits at the intersection of two or more specialist areas. Before beginning a search, businesses should be clear about:
- The commercial or strategic outcome the role must deliver.
- Which skills are genuinely essential and which can be developed.
- Whether direct payments experience is critical.
- The geographical area from which they can realistically recruit.
- How their salary, bonus, equity and flexibility compare with the relevant market.
- Whether the interview process can move quickly enough to retain candidate interest.
- What makes the opportunity compelling beyond the job description.
The temptation in a cautious market is to search for someone who meets every conceivable requirement. That often produces an unrealistic brief, an unnecessarily narrow candidate pool and a recruitment process that lasts for months. Selective hiring should mean making fewer, better-defined appointments. It should not mean waiting indefinitely for a perfect candidate who may not exist.
The market has changed, but specialist talent still matters:
Payments hiring is not returning to the high-volume environment seen earlier in the decade. Businesses are scrutinising headcount more carefully, adopting automation and expecting each appointment to make a clearer contribution. That is happening across the UK, Europe and the US, although the precise pressures vary considerably between markets. But the need for specialist expertise has not disappeared.
If anything, payments roles are becoming more complex. Employers increasingly want people who can work across technology, regulation, product, customers and commercial strategy rather than remaining within one narrow discipline.
A larger candidate market may provide more CVs. It does not necessarily provide more people with that combination. For payments and FinTech businesses, the challenge is no longer simply finding someone capable of doing the job. It is identifying which capabilities genuinely matter, understanding where those people can be found and creating an opportunity strong enough to secure them.
If you are hiring across the UK, Europe or the US, I can help you benchmark the role, assess the available talent pool and understand current salary expectations before you commit to a search.
Please feel free to contact me for an informal and confidential conversation: bn@payments-recruitment.co.uk
