M20/20: Mastercard Maps Out Future of Payments Tech
In an exclusive interview with FinTech Magazine at Money20/20, Greg Ulrich, Chief AI and Data Officer at Mastercard, outlined how the payments technology company is revolutionising its infrastructure to support next-generation AI capabilities.
AI-Powered Fraud Prevention
With more than 143 billion transactions processed annually, Mastercard faces unique opportunities in implementing AI solutions at scale.
Greg explains that fraud prevention remains at the forefront of the company's AI strategy: “If you think about everything we're doing in fraud monitoring, all of that is AI-enabled and it's allowed us to protect the ecosystem in ways that we wouldn't have been able to imagine just a few years ago.”
The company's fraud detection systems must operate within milliseconds during live transactions, requiring sophisticated infrastructure.
“We have to provide advice and information in a transaction through the flow. We have a few milliseconds to do that, so we need infrastructure that is not only powerful but has the right latency for us,” says Greg.
Infrastructure and Real-Time Processing
Mastercard's approach to AI infrastructure involves careful consideration of various operational factors.
“We're trying to balance what we do in batch, what we do in real-time, what we do on cloud, and what we do on-premise,” Greg explains. “We're optimising our infrastructure to balance cost and energy consumption, as well as speed and latency.”
The advancement in computational capabilities has enabled more sophisticated solutions. “The speed, quality and power of the infrastructure continues to advance at such a rapid clip that we're able to embed more fraud solutions, more intelligence, much more quickly, and with more power than ever before,” Greg notes.
“If you think about everything we're doing in fraud monitoring, all of that is AI-enabled and it's allowed us to protect the ecosystem in ways that we wouldn't have been able to imagine just a few years ago.”
Future of Financial Services
In the near term, Mastercard is focused on enhancing its service delivery through emerging technologies. “We're looking at how to continue to improve the fraud models, how we make life more seamless with agentic frameworks and how we reduce friction in the ecosystem,” Greg explains.
Looking ahead, Greg envisions a future where AI and data capabilities converge to create new possibilities for personalised financial services.
"When we look at where the world comes together through open banking and consented data, we're going to have a much more powerful data network as a society.
“Organisations like Mastercard can provide that trusted data infrastructure network to enable these use cases to come to life.
“I think it's this confluence of consent, open banking, data, analytics and AI that's going to enable that vision, which has had some promise for a while, and will really come to the fore over the next several years."
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