Visa Opens Atlanta HQ to Tap Diverse Local Talent and Fintech Denizens

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

Plans were originally unveiled in 2021, and Visa’s decision to branch out from its traditional headquarters in San Francisco to office sites in key U.S. cities signals a new era in corporate culture and business efficacy, as Visa Head of Global Client Services Elizabeth Rector told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster.

“With Atlanta, we think it’s really important to put our people, when we can, near big concentrations of business, and put our people close to clients. That’s in large part why my role is here and why we’re building the office here,” Rector said.

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” that’s considered the nation’s largest trucking hub.

And then there’s payments.

Atlanta Ascends as a Fintech Capital

“We are here because we’ve got more than 70 FinTech and payment companies here,” Rector said. And because of the city’s concentration of colleges and universities, she added, that in 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. That all made it a very easy choice to come here. We have every function represented here across Visa, but the concentration is really technology, at about 50%, and our client services are about 30% of the team here. The focus is building out those two teams, but we’re welcoming all other functions.”

Clients are already excited about Visa’s presence in the city. Rector said. “It’s 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 outcomes for their clients. They rely on us to bring that to the problem solving, to the innovation. That’s very important.”

Also important is “anything that we can help them with along their growth strategy,” she said, particularly data “and any insights we can provide to them.”

See also: Visa to Hire 1,000 Workers for New Atlanta Office

New HQs, New Philosophy

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

Rector describes the new digs at 1200 Peachtree St. in midtown as “our most state-of-the-art office to date. We’re really excited about that. Certainly, having clients here and innovating together is a big part of being here. We created spaces to do that. We’ve also done a lot from just thinking through how people work.”

The new HQ is filled with “configurable” spaces designed with traditional workstations, social hubs, soft seating areas for privacy, and more, allowing those who come to the office more flexibility at a time when millions of workers are in remote and hybrid arrangements, and have been for the past three years.

Spaces “go from small to large, so we can have large client groups if we want, or very small,” Rector said, adding, “We’re learning a lot. Our clients are learning a lot about what it means to work in the office right now, and what kind of work we do in the office right now.”

She said it was important “that we could adapt the office as we learn from our people, from our clients, about how we like to use it. We’re really 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.

Rector said Visa is working with Georgia FinTech Academy, Georgia Tech, and local universities “to help contribute to building FinTech capabilities and entrepreneurs. On the social impact front, we’ve been working with small businesses and minority-owned businesses to enable digital capabilities,” providing hardware like laptops as well as financial literacy education.

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