Mastercard supercharges consumer protection with gen AI

As fraudsters increasingly exploit technology to try to thwart banks and their customers, Mastercard is adopting generative AI techniques to enhance the protections that keep consumers – and the entire payments network – safe.

Mastercard’s world-leading Decision Intelligence (DI) - a real-time decisioning solution - already helps banks score and safely approve 143 billion transactions a year. New generative AI technology will scan an unprecedented one trillion data points to predict whether a transaction is likely to be genuine or not, building Mastercard’s existing ability to analyze account, purchase, merchant and device information in real time.

The next generation technology, Decision Intelligence Pro, works by assessing the relationships between multiple entities surrounding a transaction to determine its risk. In less than 50 milliseconds, this technology improves the overall DI score, sharpening the data provided to banks. Initial modelling shows  AI enhancements boost fraud detection rates on average by 20% and as high as 300% in some instances.

“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,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of Cyber and Intelligence at Mastercard.

The enhancement of DI will further improve banks’ abilities to protect cardholders from fraudulent transactions and mitigate what are known as known as false positives: legitimate transactions which are incorrectly flagged as fraudulent ones.

“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%,” said Bhalla.

DI Pro will be available from later this year.