Overview
- Evident released its inaugural AI Index for Payments on February 25, ranking Visa first, Mastercard second and PayPal third, with Stripe and Block placing fifth and sixth.
- The index evaluates companies on talent, innovation, leadership and transparency rather than specific product wins.
- Payments firms show unusually dense AI staffing, with an average 6.5% of employees focused on AI and roughly 30% more AI specialists than other finance sectors.
- PayPal accounts for 18% of the indexed companies’ AI talent, and Stripe and Block each report AI workers exceeding 10% of their total headcount.
- Across the 12 firms, none has published aggregate achieved or projected AI ROI, while Visa says it has invested over $3.5 billion in AI and data, employs 2,500+ technologists and operates 300+ production models supporting fraud and financial crime detection.