Visa has been ranked as the global leader in artificial intelligence adoption within the payments industry, according to a new index published on Wednesday. The ranking by Evident, a firm tracking AI in finance, places Mastercard and PayPal in second and third place, respectively, highlighting a competitive landscape where established players and newer fintechs like Stripe and Block are rapidly building AI capabilities.

The index evaluates 12 major payments companies on four key criteria: talent, innovation, leadership, and transparency. While the sector is aggressively hiring AI specialists—with an average of 6.5% of their combined workforce of over 335,000 employees focused on AI—a significant transparency gap remains. Not a single company has publicly disclosed the achieved or projected return on investment (ROI) for its overall AI efforts, a contrast to the banking sector where 10 of 50 tracked institutions share such figures.

The Talent Arms Race

Talent is the most influential factor in the ranking, and the payments industry is investing heavily to secure it. Evident found that these companies employ 30% more AI-focused workers than other financial institutions, despite generally having smaller total workforces. PayPal alone accounts for 18% of the AI talent among the indexed firms, with more than 4,000 AI workers. Stripe and Block also stand out, with AI specialists making up over 10% of their staff.

“With relatively nascent industry players like Stripe and Block performing well — and showing their AI potential reflected in their valuations — the Index leaders cannot afford to drop off the pace,” said Alexandra Mousavizadeh, co-founder and co-CEO of Evident.

Use Cases and the ROI Question

The top three companies—Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal—were responsible for more than half of the nearly 100 AI use cases documented over the past two years. Visa and Mastercard are noted as particularly advanced in applying AI to fraud detection and cybersecurity. Visa has invested more than $3.5 billion in AI and data over the past decade and has over 300 AI models in production, according to chief data officer Andres Vives.

However, the absence of clear ROI metrics is becoming conspicuous. “The absence of ROI disclosure — or any group targets for AI ROI — is increasingly conspicuous,” said Annabel Ayles, Evident's other co-founder and co-CEO. She warned that the market will “sooner or later demand clearer evidence of value.” For now, AI's benefits are often baked into existing performance measures like lower transaction costs.

The Next Competitive Frontier

The report suggests the industry is moving from using AI as a “defensive necessity to strategic advantage,” with agentic AI capabilities likely playing a bigger future role. Both PayPal and Mastercard have teased AI agents in recent earnings calls, and Visa mentioned the potential of “agentic commerce.”

As leaders at major banks already face analyst questions about AI payoffs, payments companies are under similar pressure. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has acknowledged competitive threats from fintechs and payments firms like Stripe and PayPal. Evident concludes that the next milestone may be financial transparency: the first company to publish comprehensive AI ROI measures will become a new kind of “first-mover.”