PayPal Cuts 251 More Bay Area Jobs, Part of a Plan to Eliminate 4,760 Positions Worldwide

PayPal filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification with California's Employment Development Department confirming it will eliminate 251 jobs at its San Jose headquarters on First Street, effective October 30, 2026, according to KRON-TV. The cuts hit mostly senior software engineers and engineering managers, KRON reported, citing the Silicon Valley Business Journal.

PayPal intends to cut roughly 20% of its global workforce, about 4,760 jobs out of the 23,800 employees it had at the end of 2025, according to the LA Times, which cited Bloomberg. The company says the goal is $1.5 billion in annual savings, redirected toward AI integration and what CEO Enrique Lores calls a multiyear transformation.

Lores took over as CEO in March 2026 after running HP. He replaced PayPal's previous chief executive, who was pushed out in February 2026 because his "pace of change and execution" over two years didn't satisfy the board, the LA Times reported.

The Cuts Are Global

The layoffs aren't confined to San Jose. In Ireland, PayPal is cutting 164 jobs, about 12% of its workforce there, according to Calcalist Tech. In Israel, PayPal's Tel Aviv development center, built around its 2008 acquisition of fraud-detection startup Fraud Sciences for roughly $169 million, is losing dozens of employees, Calcalist reported. PayPal's Israeli operation currently employs about 200 to 250 people, most of them data scientists and software engineers working on security systems and core components of the company's user experience and mobile applications, according to Calcalist.

In India, the discrepancy is sharper. Multiple reports say PayPal let go of 600 employees across its Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad centers, according to thesouthfirst. A PayPal spokesperson told thesouthfirst the real number is about 220 employees, a 4% cut to its India workforce. Employees quoted by thesouthfirst said they were called onto a video meeting on the morning of August 31 with staff from multiple offices dialed in together, informed they were being let go, and had their system access revoked immediately after the call ended. PayPal has not publicly reconciled the 600-versus-220 gap.

Employees across PayPal's operations, including a 22-year Braintree unit director, a Buy Now, Pay Later commercial manager, and an executive producer for corporate events, posted on LinkedIn this week describing their jobs as eliminated. A PayPal spokesperson told Payments Dive the cuts stem from the transformation plan announced in May and declined to give a specific headcount number.

A Failed $53 Billion Sale in the Background

The layoffs land days after reports that a potential sale of PayPal, or its assets, fell through. Stripe and private equity firm Advent International had reportedly offered $60.50 per share, valuing PayPal at roughly $53 billion, after an initial approach in April, according to Reuters reporting cited by Payments Dive and the LA Times. Other potential suitors floated in coverage included Block, Apple, and unnamed big banks. The pursuit was abandoned, according to Bloomberg reporting cited by both outlets.

PayPal posted net income of $1.26 billion in the second quarter, down 12% from a year earlier, the LA Times reported. Shares have fallen more than 15% over the past 12 months and were trading around $55. PayPal has pointed partly to what it calls a "K-shaped economy," where wealthier consumers keep spending while lower-income customers pull back, as a drag on its checkout business, according to the LA Times. The company is also investing $400 million this year to grow its branded checkout product.

Crypto Gets Its Own Division

In April 2026, PayPal reorganized into three business units: Checkout Solutions & PayPal, Consumer Financial Services & Venmo, and Payment Services & Crypto, according to Crypto Briefing. The crypto unit centers on PYUSD, PayPal's dollar-pegged stablecoin, which Crypto Briefing describes as one of the first stablecoins issued by a major publicly traded financial company. Giving it a standalone division suggests PayPal expects it to generate real revenue, not just serve as a side project.

The Broader Layoff Wave

PayPal isn't cutting alone. Apple cut nearly 150 machine-learning and software engineering jobs in late August, the LA Times reported, while Meta, Snap, Block, Oracle and Amazon have all announced layoffs this year tied to AI investment. Tech layoffs nationally hit 123,653 from January through May 2026, up 66% from the same period in 2025, according to outplacement firm Challenger cited by the LA Times. Layoffs.fyi counted 128,903 tech layoffs across 294 companies in 2026 as of KRON's reporting, with Bay Area cuts topping 58,000, a 141% jump over last year.

In India, PayPal is one of several multinationals trimming staff this year, alongside Oracle, Uber, Wells Fargo and Walmart, according to thesouthfirst, which cited TrueUp's tally of more than 175,000 IT sector job cuts nationwide in 2026, with Oracle alone accounting for 21,000.

Sean Randolph of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute told KRON-TV that companies are "right-sizing" and that AI is a factor, though it doesn't necessarily mean the companies are unhealthy. San Jose State professor Ahmed Banafa told KRON that one engineer using AI tools can now do the work of three, calling PayPal's move "strategic restructuring" rather than a sign of financial distress.

PayPal's 4,760-job target is set to unfold over the next two to three years, meaning San Jose's October 30 cuts and India's late-August round are early installments, not the finish line. Whether PayPal ever clarifies the gap between its own 220-job India figure and the 600 reported by affected employees remains an open question the company has yet to answer.