2023: A year of fintech job cuts
As we say farewell to 2023, FinTech Futures takes a look back at some of the stories that dominated the year.
Fintechs and banks of all sizes faced challenging economic and market conditions this year, causing many to initiate waves of job cuts.
Here are five of the most notable fintech job cut stories of 2023.
January 2023: Coinbase cuts 950 jobs and shuts down several projects
Coinbase cut 20% of its workforce in January
Back in January, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced that it was to axe 20% of its workforce as part of a push towards greater operational efficiency.
At the time, CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong stated that “the crypto market trended downwards along with the broader macroeconomy” throughout 2022.
As a result, the firm sought to cut its operational expense by around 25% quarter on quarter, Armstrong said, which unfortunately included letting go of around 950 people and shutting down several projects that “have a lower probability of success”.
However, Coinbase was not alone in reducing its staff, as cryptocurrency firms Crypto.com and Luno both made cuts to their workforces in the same month.
February 2023: PayPal lays off 2,000 staff
US payments giant PayPal announced its plans to lay off approximately 2,000 employees, or about 7% of its total staff headcount, in February.
In a message to employees, PayPal’s president and CEO at the time, Dan Schulman, cited the “challenging macro-economic environment” as a reason behind the job cuts, to which the company was actively seeking to adapt.
Schulman emphasised that PayPal “must continue to change as our world, our customers, and our competitive landscape evolve”.
With this, it instigated a phased redundancy plan throughout February and the succeeding months.
May 2023: German challenger N26 cuts 71 jobs, around 4% of total workforce
N26 announced job cuts in May 2023
In May, German challenger N26 cut 71 jobs – around 4% of its total workforce – in a bid to “sharpen its focus on its most important strategic priorities” against the backdrop of “significant and long-lasting changes” to the global business landscape.
In a statement, N26 said the size of its teams and its structure are “constantly reviewed” in line with these priorities.
“As such, leaders at N26 have recently reassessed each functions’ individual staffing needs to adjust and adapt team structures in certain areas,” the firm said at the time.
June 2023: UK paytech GoCardless lays off 15% of its workforce
In June, UK-based paytech GoCardless announced it would be laying off 15% of its workforce in the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand, or about 135 roles, as part of wider cost reduction plans.
The company’s CEO and co-founder, Hiroki Takeuchi, attributed the cuts to “the current economic environment”, and as a result, the firm had decided to “focus our efforts on the core areas of our business and reduce our investment in initiatives with longer term payback”.
In addition to reducing the size of its senior leadership team by 25%, GoCardless also moved 15 roles from the UK to Riga, Latvia, to bring the total number of impacted roles to 150, or 17% of its headcount.
October 2023: BaaS fintech Synapse lays off 40% of staff
Synapse laid off 40% of staff in October
In October, US-based Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform Synapse laid off 86 of its employees, or about 40% of its workforce.
Commenting on the decision, Synapse CEO Sankaet Pathak said at the time: “We made the difficult decision to reduce and restructure our team in areas that were staffed for unrealized growth or redundancy.”
Synapse had previously announced a reduction and restructuring of its team back in June, which impacted 18% of its workforce at the time, citing macroeconomic conditions which had “begun to impact our clients and platforms, affecting our anticipated growth”.
