Visa is moving its European headquarters to London’s financial district, hot off the heels of an announcement JP Morgan That it would build a landmark tower in an area considered the city’s answer to Wall Street.

Visa, whose European headquarters are currently in Paddington, west London, has signed a 15-year, 300,000 sq ft lease at One Canada Square in Canary Wharf, according to Canary Wharf Group. The firm will move in the summer of 2028.

It follows news that JP Morgan plans to build a 3 million-square-foot tower in the city’s historic financial district, while HSBCfor , for , for , . BBVAfor , for , for , . Barclaysfor , for , for , . Citibank And others have tried again in the area in 2025. British fintech Rulot also opened an office in the area in September.

Canary Wharf was hit particularly hard as the coronavirus pandemic fueled the move to hybrid and remote working. The Docklands core submarket, which includes Canary Wharf, is at a record high vacancy rate of 18.5% in the first quarter of 2025, according to Costar data.

There are three main reasons for the district’s revitalization, Canary Wharf Group CEO Shubi Khan told CNBC in September, at which point Canary Wharf’s vacancy rate was 6%.

The first is the convenience of the Elizabeth Line railway, which has provided access to the area that has “never been better”, as well as the fact that the site is now multi-use, including residential homes and hotels as well as offices.

“And finally, real estate is about supply and demand. With the construction pipeline essentially shutting down after 2026 and so are rent increases, we’re pushing rents and taking advantage of limited space to see occupiers,” Khan said.

“Canary Wharf is thriving,” he added.

More than 750,000 sq ft of office leases have been announced in the Docklands region this year, with Canary Wharf Group saying it will be its best office leasing year in more than a decade.

According to Shabab Qadir, partner and head of London research at Knight Frank, this has been helped by measures announced in the UK’s autumn budget, which stabilized the long-term interest rate environment—a key metric for the real estate industry.

JPMorgan’s commitment on Friday was that “a great symbol of London is open for business.”. “London needs to come back. There are very attractive prices for London offices right now.”

Companies are increasingly requiring employees to return to the office and incentivize them to do so, with real estate offering a respite from high volatility risk in part of the pandemic-era changes to work.

“Occupiers want their accommodation to be more conducive to employee well-being. There’s a battle for efficiency, and getting people back into the office, which we’ve grown significantly over the last 12 months, requires employers to provide the best quality office space for their staff,” Kadir said.

“People made the wrong decisions when it was down in the last few years, and we’re now seeing a period of encouragement,” he added.

A new three-year stamp duty exemption for companies listing on the UK stock exchange will “provide a kicker to financial services in the city in particular,” Kadir said, however, pension reforms “are also important to increasing London’s attractiveness to global investors.”

“Digital payments are powering economies across Europe. This exciting next step will better position us to lead the future of payments, giving Europeans access to world-class payment experiences,” Antony Cahill, regional president and CEO of Visa Europe, said in a statement.