Visa opens headquarters in Atlanta to tap local talent, FinTechs

Atlanta, Georgia, is known for many things, and it can now add a large Visa office to that list as the company announced the opening of its new hub there on Wednesday (February 8).

Plans were originally unveiled in 2021, and Visa’s decision to branch out from its traditional headquarters in San Francisco to offices in key US cities signals a new era in corporate culture and business efficiency, as Visa head of global client services Elizabeth Rector told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster.

“With Atlanta, we think it’s very important to put our employees, whenever we can, close to large concentrations of business, and to put our people close to customers. That is largely why my role is here and why we are building the office here, said the principal.

Atlanta’s role as a business epicenter has increased dramatically in recent years, and Georgia is home to consumer packaged goods giants like Coca-Cola, logistics titans like UPS, retail name brands including The Home Depot, as well as the home hub of Delta Airlines. Just about 100 miles away is Chattanooga, Tennessee, the “crossroads city” considered the nation’s largest trucking hub.

And then there are payments.

Atlanta is emerging as a Fintech capital

“We are here because we have more than 70 FinTech and payment companies here,” the principal said. And because of the city’s concentration of colleges and universities, she added, by coming to Atlanta, Visa now has access to one of the best talent pools in America.

She told Webster that Atlanta offers “the most diverse tech talent in the nation. It made it a very easy choice to come here. We have all functions represented here across Visa, but the concentration is really technology, at about 50%, and our customer services is about 30% of the team here. The focus is on building out the two teams, but we welcome all other functions.”

Customers are already excited about Visa’s presence in the city. said the principal. “It is our thought leadership and expertise that they tell us is the most valuable part of our service to them. We focus on trying to help [Visa clients] drive their business results for their customers. They depend on us to bring it to the problem solving, to the innovation. It is very important.”

Also important is “anything we can help them with along their growth strategy,” she said, especially data “and any insight we can give them.”

See also: Visa to hire 1000 workers for New Atlanta Office

New headquarters, new philosophy

In a blog post on Wednesday (Feb. 8), Visa noted that “As a global company with operations in more than 200 countries and territories, it is important to us that the makeup of our company reflects the tremendous diversity of the communities we serve, and that having local hubs is crucial to the type of customer service we promise to deliver. As Visa continues to grow, it is increasingly important that we have a strong local presence in the communities where we do meaningful business.”

The principal describes the new digs at 1200 Peachtree St. downtown as “our most state-of-the-art office to date. We are very excited about that. Certainly having customers here and innovating together is a big part of being here. We created spaces to do that. We have also done a lot from just thinking through how people work.”

The new headquarters is filled with “configurable” spaces designed with traditional workstations, social hubs, soft seating areas for privacy and more, giving office-goers more flexibility at a time when millions of workers are in remote and hybrid arrangements, and has been for the past three years.

The spaces “go from small to large, so we can have large customer groups if we want, or very small,” said the principal, adding, “We’re learning a lot. Our customers are learning a lot about what it means to work in the office right now, and what kind of work we’re doing in the office right now.”

She said it was important “that we could adapt the office as we learn from our people, from our customers, about how we like to use it. We are very proud of what we are opening today.”

With the presence of many historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Atlanta also helps Visa in its quest for greater diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace.

Chancellor said Visa is partnering with the Georgia FinTech Academy, Georgia Tech and local universities “to help build FinTech capabilities and entrepreneurs. On the social impact front, we’ve worked with small businesses and minority-owned businesses to enable digital opportunities,” providing hardware such as laptops as well as education in financial literacy.

Visa has also opened a similar new office location in Washington, DC, and will soon open a second office location in San Francisco at Mission Rock.