How AI is Transforming Fraud Detection in Payments

Cashless is the new currency of the country and a fully cashless society is soon to be a reality.

Predictions are that the UAE will become fully cashless by 2030.

While digital payments are clearly convenient, there are some cons consumers and businesses both need to be wary about - especially, frauds and scams.

Over 50% increase in fraud reports for the year just proves the intensity. It gives us all the reasons why it is important to implement robust fraud detection in payment. And that’s where you can call AI or Artificial Intelligence to the rescue.

The machine learning algorithms, predictive analytics, natural language processing, and other capabilities that AI brings do not just solve the efficiency, accuracy, and user experience challenges, but also help identify malicious activities.

This article will walk you through the transformation of AI in fraud detection.

Challenges of Fraud Detection

Advancement is everywhere. While your payment systems have evolved, so have the fraud techniques become sophisticated.

Here’s the thing with the traditional fraud detection systems, they are built to work on fixed patterns and rules. They are rigid with the capability to identify just the existing trends. This is why your current detection system might fail to determine the onset of new fraud trends.

Secondly, such a system reports anything that goes beyond the fixed rules. Result? False alarms. It also blocks genuine customers out and reports them leading to business loss. This is why your business needs a system that can adapt to evolving business needs and AI in fraud detection comes into play.

How is AI Used for Fraud Detection

Artificial Intelligence uses a set of machine learning algorithms with the capability to analyze and identify abnormal behaviors or patterns. The first step in the process is - learning the normal behaviors and what’s considered standard user behaviors while making payments. For the next steps, this technology scans through all the data to find any behaviors that are off the track. It doesn’t end here, where the traditional fraud detection systems do, i.e. detect and report anything abnormal.

AI now takes a step ahead of the curve to analyze this new pattern or new behavior to understand the intention behind it. It has the capacity to alter its parameters to make sense of the new detection and understand if it is genuine or suspicious.

Based on the hypothesis, it takes immediate action by either blocking the transactions or giving access to them.

Here are some of the common AI mechanisms:

• Data collection
• Model training
• Alerting and reporting
• Feature engineering and detection
• Self-learning

Benefits of AI for Fraud Detection

Now’s the right time to be a step ahead and safeguard your business from online threats. Learn about the benefits of machine learning and AI for fraud detection:

Enhanced Accuracy

AI algorithms are taught to pick recurring fraud instances or patterns that might miss the human eye. This meticulous scanning and detection function contributes to enhanced detection and accuracy. AI can scan through heaps of data and pick up malicious activities in no time.

Real-time Results

AI algorithms work on a real-time basis. They have the power to block suspicious activity as and when it occurs, cutting off any negative implications immediately. This keeps businesses safe from threats in all capacities.

Reduced Manual Workload

Employees would no longer spend time on manual fraud detection, monitoring, or analytics. This gives them a lot of time to focus on innovative and strategic activities to grow your business. Save your employees some time and give your business some innovative wings.

Self-learning Capacity

The technology is built to think like humans. This means it is on the quest to improve its knowledge, and the more data it gathers, the more it learns. The technology keeps growing, making better analyses and predictions. Plus, the AI systems of the world also exchange knowledge among themselves. Hence, better predictions are always evident.

Easy to Scale

No data is too much data for AI models. They have the capacity to go through tons of data, and they can do it in seconds if not milliseconds. This is extremely helpful when businesses grow. They can enjoy high accuracy and speed without having to upgrade their AI-deployed fraud detection system.

Highly Cost Effective

While there are some initial investments connected with deploying AI in fraud detection, they are cost-effective in the long run. They automate a lot of fraud detection and rectification processes and also eliminate mundane manual tasks. Not to forget, they stop fraud which can otherwise lead to heavy monetary losses. Plus, there are no additional costs during scaling.

Customer Satisfaction

Security is given with AI in fraud detection which increases customer trust and retention. Additionally, traditional limitations such as false positives are put at bay. This increases customer satisfaction and business revenue. With these benefits, business owners can enjoy a competitive advantage and massive business gains.

Common Frauds That AI Can Detect

There is no stopping new fraud scams from emerging. But, here are some of the common AI frauds you are highly likely to encounter:

Card Fraud

Scammers do not sit down to find cards with loopholes or weak security. They leverage bots to find these gaps and detect them at large to conduct a brute-force attack on payment gateways. They are extremely common and because they are done using bots, AI has the power to detect them.

AI goes beyond just reading IPs and the IP reputation of a source and into the behavior to detect what’s a bot and a real person. Based on the analysis, AI takes immediate action to block any malicious bots. CAPTCHA is another form of AI technique used to distinguish people from bots.

Fake Account Creation

The biggest prey to fake account creation is social media. There are just so many accounts creating havoc at large, and it is a bot art. They can create tons of accounts at a go to skew your, say, product reviews, spread misleading information, create malware, and more.

Heightened sign-up security is the solution you say, incorrect! Increasing the standard sign-up security process would only increase user friction, leading to an increased user drop-off rate. AI however can detect and catch bots and fraudsters from the existing signup flow.

Account Takeover (ATO)

Fraudsters cannot just create fake accounts, they can also take over your existing business accounts. This can put a strain on your business reputation and financial health.

You sure can deploy a multi-factor authentication but its effectiveness relies on users too. It doesn’t work for the ones who don’t toggle it. AI, on the other hand, has what it takes to detect the tiny clues that scream of attempted ATO, and immediately block it.

Credential Stuffing

Another method of attempted scams is credential stuffing. Well, scamsters use bots to find and fill in common usernames and passwords to crack access. They even leverage previously stolen data to detect reused passwords of users to gain access and steal.

AI is always on the lookout for accounts with multiple login failures or other such abnormal behaviors. It can find, report, and block such attempted credential stuffing breaches.

Where is AI Headed 

AI and machine learning for fraud will continue to evolve forever. This makes us confident that it can preserve your business’s security. These systems are trained to think like humans and analyze all data points like customer behaviors, device functionality, and more besides the mainstream financial data.

The result? Detection accuracy and it will just get better.

Regarding what the future holds, AI models can be trained to adapt to any possible future onsets. They will continue to be the driving security force for your business and your customers, acting as the shield of protection. We cannot emphasize their ability to self-learn and act on a real-time basis enough, which is an asset for business owners such as you. You must leverage AI in fraud detection for your payment infrastructure and reap security benefits.

Ending on this note, if you use AI for bank fraud prevention, you cannot just protect your customers from fraud but also enhance their experience transacting with you. Yes, it provides smarter detection, hypothesis, and resolution in real time. But it can also analyze customer behavior and data points that can help you make critical product enhancements and innovations.

It’s time to provide your customers with a frictionless and safe payment experience without the workload. And PayBy is here for you.

We leverage AI-based fraud monitoring, 3D secure authentication, and transaction risk analysis to provide the utmost safety. Get started with Payby to know more.