Mastercard Adopts Generative AI To Boost Fraud Detection!

Artificial intelligence (AI) has gripped the world with its incredible capabilities, especially those offered by generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), making it possible to create articles, videos, photos, music, code and a lot more with simple text prompts.

Unfortunately, this technology can also be used by bad actors for harmful actions like hacking, committing fraud, spreading disinformation and more.

On the flip side, businesses are taking note of the increased activity of fraudsters to provide solutions that help banking and financial institutions, as well as their consumers, ways to safeguard themselves.

This is what Mastercard, the global payments technology company, is aiming for with its latest announcement.

So, what is Mastercard doing to tackle fraud and what did the company announce? Let’s explore!
 

What Did Mastercard Announce?

 

• In an announcement made by Mastercard, the company is launching an updated version of its world-leading, real-time decision-making solution, Decision Intelligence (DI). 

• The updated version will come equipped with GenAI capabilities to help banks and financial institutions analyze and assess suspicious transactions on its networks.

• This will be done by scanning an unprecedented one trillion data points to predict whether a transaction is genuine or not. Additionally, this will enhance Mastercard’s ability to “analyze account, purchase, merchant and device information in real time.”

• As per Mastercard, the platform’s initial modeling shows the enhancements boost fraud detection rates by 20% on average and even as high as 300% in some cases.

• The new platform capabilities are powered by a proprietary recurrent neural network that’s built in-house.

• The platform analyzes and assesses the relationship between the entities surrounding a transaction to calculate its risk. Within 50 milliseconds, DI Pro will improve the overall DI score and share the new data with banks.

• Furthermore, the platform will improve their ability to protect cardholders from fraudulent transactions and reduce “false positives” or transactions that are actually legitimate but are flagged as fraudulent.

• Mastercard’s Decision Intelligence solution is already helping banks score and approve 143 billion transactions a year.

• The next iteration of the platform will be called Decision Intelligence Pro (DI Pro) and will be made available later this year.

 

What Did Mastercard Executives Say?

 

• Ajay Bhalla, President of Cyber and Intelligence at Mastercard, said, “With generative AI we are transforming the speed and accuracy of our anti-fraud solutions, deflecting the efforts of criminals, and protecting banks and their customers. Supercharging our algorithm will improve our ability to anticipate the next potential fraudulent event, instilling trust into every interaction.” 

• [Contd.] “The precision of the solution – achieved by scanning potential points of sale in real time - has been shown in our own analysis to not only increase accuracy, but also reduce the number of false positives by more than 85%.”

• In an interview, Bhalla added, “We are using the transformer models which basically help get the power of generative AI ... It’s all built in house we’ve got all kinds of data from the ecosystem. Because of the very nature of the business we are in, we see all the transaction data which comes to us from the ecosystem.”

Do you think Mastercard’s move will inspire other payments and fintech companies to follow suit? Can GenAI revolutionize fraud detection and prevention in the banking industry?

Let us know in the comments below!