245 Audio.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

245 Audio.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Rajat: 0:00

Last year we detected and stocked over $40 billion of fraud with the models we have. But we also take it forward. For example, a typical transaction will go from the merchant to their bank. It comes in real time to us, we send it to the issuing bank that has issued the credit card or the debit card to the consumer and they then send back their signals to us. We process it and send it to the merchant. Now, in all of that, there are occasions when the communication doesn't occur seamlessly, where maybe there's a telecommunication problem or the bank has issues on their side. We have trained our models to be able to mimic what they might have done over years and decades of training our model on the data to say how can we stand in and process the transaction so the consumer and the merchant are not impacted?

Craig: 0:50

Create an oasis with Thuma, a modern design company that specializes in furniture and home goods. By stripping away everything but the essential, thuma makes elevated beds with premium materials and intentional details. I'm in the process of reorganizing my house and I'm giving Thuma a serious look for help in renovating and redesigning. Thuma combines the perfect balance of form, craftsmanship and functionality. With over 17,000 five-star reviews, the Thuma Bed Collection is proof that simplicity is the truest form of sophistication. Using the technique of Japanese joinery, pieces are crafted from solid wood and precision cut for a silent, stable foundation With clean lines, subtle curves and minimalist style. The Thuma Bed Collection is available in four signature finishes to match any design aesthetic. Headboard upgrades are available for customization as desired. To get $100 toward your first bed purchase, go to thumacoionai that's thumacoionai to receive $100 off your first bed purchase. $100 off your first bed purchase. I usually start by having you introduce yourself to listeners and then I'll start asking questions from there.

Rajat: 2:57

Introduce yourself to listeners and tell us why Visa is at an AI conference. My name is Rajat Taneja. I'm the president of technology for Visa is Rajat Taneja, I'm the president of technology for Visa, and we are one of the original practitioners of AI, and we are delighted to be part of the conversation here at Human X, thinking about the future, helping design the future as well, with AI and I know that you guys have used AI for a long time in fraud detection and I was interested with Gen AI expanding the attack surface for fraud attacks.

Craig: 3:37

How are you keeping up with that?

Rajat: 3:40

So AI is in the very fabric of Visa at some level and has been for decades.

Rajat: 3:46

And if you kind of step back and think about what Visa does, we are one of the world's largest SaaS platforms.

Rajat: 3:54

One side, we serve 4.7 billion Visa credentials and on the other side, there are over 150 million merchants.

Rajat: 4:02

So in a typical year, we will process over 300 billion transactions in real time and we process about $16 trillion through our network, and so, in order to ensure trust between the buyer and the seller, it's very important to make sure that they know that the transaction will be authorized correctly, that money will flow accurately, in the case of any dispute, visa will be behind it and we will manage any fraud and make sure we are fully compliant. So AI has helped us in all of these factors through the decades. Our first model was to manage risk in a transaction, as you mentioned, but subsequent to that, ai is part of our cybersecurity program, is part of our operational infrastructure we run at six, nines, 99.9999% uptown and so detecting and finding and being ahead of operational issues. Ai is a big tool in that it's across everything we do and has been, and generative. Ai of course, takes us into the next generation of AI and we're excited and thrilled to be part of that?

Craig: 5:27

Yeah, and specifically on fraud detection, is it pattern matching and uncovering anomalous features in a pattern? I know it's much more complicated than you can explain in a few minutes, but what's the basic tool behind fraud detection?

Rajat: 5:51

So we mostly use deep neural nets and at the very core of those is patent matching and training the model to understand what a good transaction is and what a bad transaction is, so that the good transactions flow through, the bad transactions are stopped and the false positives and false negatives are very minimal. And we use different techniques in that and typically our model's an ensemble model and risk is one. Payment fraud disruption is the other one. Enumeration attacks, when bad guys steal or have access to a lot of card data and they're trying to figure out which card works and which doesn't and then utilize the ones that are still active to do a lot of nefarious things. So those are called enumeration attacks. Where we are on top of that, e-commerce disruptions fake sites are set up for e-commerce. So we are able to signal that Last year we detected and stopped over $40 billion of fraud with the models we have.

Rajat: 6:58

But we also take it forward. For example, a typical transaction will go from the merchant to their bank, the acquiring bank. It comes in real time to us, we send it to the issuing bank that has issued the credit card or the debit card to the consumer and they then send back their signals to us, we process it and send it to the merchant. Now, in all of that, there are occasions when the communication doesn't occur seamlessly, where maybe there's a telecommunication problem or the bank has issues on their side. We have trained our models to be able to mimic what they might have done over years and decades of training our model on the data to say how can we stand in and process the transaction so the consumer and the merchant are not impacted? And that's another use case of a deep neural net that we have been using.

Craig: 7:52

Is this your own model or are you fine-tuning an open-source model? Or do you partner with Anthropic or somebody like that?

Rajat: 8:02

So for the existing models that we have and over 100 products of ours have AI, these are essentially predictive AI models, neural nets. We train the models ourselves, we create it ourselves, we run it ourselves, we manage the model in production 100% ourselves, and we have been committed to and a deep believer in AI for over 30 years. During the dark winter of AI, where nobody sort of really believed in it, visa continued to invest and had deep belief in it. As generative AI has come out, we have been working with generative AI techniques from 2018 onwards. Actually, we have embraced six different models right now, but we have created an abstraction layer that allows us to add, delete, remove models as they evolve and have an ensemble, and then we connect those to our own data where we need to, and then we enable direct access and through other application layers for various use cases.

Craig: 9:06

Yeah, and you know so. Visa, unbeknownst to the public, has been an AI company since the 90s, right, indeed, Is it frustrating that you're not recognized for your AI work or potential? Ai work or potential.

Rajat: 9:24

You know we're a humble company. We run behind the scenes. Our goal is to uplift everyone everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid, and as long as that mission is being accomplished, we are serving the community, we are serving consumers, we are serving merchants. We are okay with us developing quietly our technologies and manifesting itself in the seamless experience where trust is established and ubiquity is established for consumers and merchants to do business in very nice ways.

Craig: 9:59

Yeah, you know I use. It's now called Credit Karma. It used to be called Mint yes, and you can connect all your different accounts and it downloads your accounts, your balance, and adds it all up and does all sorts of things. As those kinds of apps proliferate, it just seems incredible that you can keep track of data flows. It's like this spaghetti bowl of connections and microservices that are talking to each other. Is there a? How do you manage that? Is there?

Rajat: 10:54

some visualization somewhere, or is it all left to the AI or NAI system to keep track of? You're absolutely right. Our back-end data platform is one of the largest and most sophisticated in the world and we, in fact, a decade ago, realizing where the puck was going, decided to rebuild it from scratch from the AI era, and it was instrumental in allowing us to do so many innovations that we have done since then. We have spent over $3.3 billion on this data platform in this time period and we have over 500 petabytes of data, and every transaction brings data.

Rajat: 11:31

Every API that we expose and companies like Credit Karma provide data to us in different ways structured data, unstructured data, document data, graphical data and we have a very systematic way in which we ingest the data, store the data, process the data, and that is processed by AI, by applications and the business logic of those applications. It has great value at the moment. The data comes to us, but then, over time, continues to add value. I liken it to like fresh, let's say, fresh grape juice, which has great value, and then wine. Over time it ages and becomes more and more valuable. So that's the way we have our data it immediately has instant value and then collectively over time, continues to train and improve our models and our products.

Craig: 12:29

Yeah, everyone these days are looking at agentic systems, multi-agent systems, systems, multi-agent systems. Are you using agents in this system to track transactions or highlight possible fraud.

Rajat: 12:53

So a lot of our current products that are using generative AI are using the essential underlying technologies of generative AI and we are seeing the benefits of that in both productivity and software development, in client services, in our business operations and so on.

Rajat: 13:08

But, as you're pointing out, one of the more exciting things that we are envisioning for the future is agentic commerce.

Rajat: 13:18

That will have a fundamental, profound impact on the way buyers and sellers discover each other and have deeper connections and relationships over time. We are big believers that, while a lot of great things have happened over the years in payments, shopping is still in the hunting and pecking and hunting era and it's not as easy. And that will be transformed with agentic commerce the ability to take the mundane aspects of commerce like registering products, warranty manuals, price matches and things like that, agents helping with that and then bringing the joys and pleasure of commerce discovering new things, travel, art, music, so on products in new ways. But the fundamental common constant over there is payments and transactions. And how do you enable that? With agents talking to agents or an agent representing you, and we are spending a lot of time on this invention and April 30th we have a major announcement. I hope you will join your viewers will listen in where our CEO, Ryan McInerney, and my colleague, jack Forrestal are going to do a product drop and it's going to be a very exciting day in commerce.

Craig: 14:43

Yeah, but you guys are not an e-commerce platform. Are you headed in that direction? We?

Rajat: 14:49

are the platform that supports. We are the platform that supports merchants and acquiring banks and issuing banks, and that platform has to provide the same level of trust and cybersecurity and payment security and ease and reliability compliance. And so we are the underling here and we continue to be.

Craig: 15:14

But when you talk about matching and helping consumers find products, is that a function that the Visa will play or that's the function that the e-commerce platform plays and you support?

Rajat: 15:30

I think there'll be a lot of innovations in the ecosystem and we love those innovations and we expose our capabilities to open APIs, which was a big architectural investment we made again about a decade ago to open up our platform. We now have 2,900 APIs. We do about 40 billion API calls a month at the end of last year, and so the innovations will happen on our platform and we will continue to provide seamless capabilities for the transactions to take place accurately, for the clearing to happen, for the settlement to happen, for compliance to happen, risk to be managed. But the great deal of innovation and inventions will happen by others in the ecosystem partnering with us, partnering with each other and so on.

Craig: 16:24

Yeah, I'm hearing a lot about distributed systems, blockchain identity, registering your identity on the blockchain and all of those things. Is Visa looking toward that? I mean, I still use a card or I use my Apple wallet, but it seems that verifying the identity of the user and how the user is paying, whether it's through what modality all of that is changing very quickly. How do you see that developing?

Rajat: 17:09

I think the change has already begun In the face-to-face commerce. You have an identity that is manifested by a physical card and your ID that is needed. We have a chip. There's a lot of information that transmits for us to know you are, who you say you are and you can do what you say you want to do, who you say you are and you can do what you say you want to do. As you move to e-commerce and then agentic commerce, identity will move upstream. You no longer have the physical card and we've already been investing in that with tokens, which we have almost 13 billion tokens now approaching 13 billion.

Rajat: 17:50

We have been investing in mobile-level commerce with different mechanisms to authenticate the credential, to authorize and score the transaction and ensure all the downstream processes work correctly. Now take that to the next level with agentic commerce. That's going to be a big area of investment and inventions and innovation. Biometrics will play a big part over there. We announced last year Visa Passkeys that allows biometrics to be part of this and then it's going to continue to evolve and bedshelves and authentication and identity, as you're pointing out, is a key area of emphasis for us to ensure accurate transactions that the buyers and sellers can trust. The platform will make sure that disputes or frauds and all the other things that are happening can be taken care of.

Craig: 18:48

On this identification verification, as you said, I mean part of it's going to take place at the agentic level but for personal, going to use face scans, iris scans, fingerprints, voice prints.

Rajat: 19:22

It depends on the use case, but in many cases it's all of the above, depending on the device you have that is giving us some information, or we are able to collect it in different ways.

Rajat: 19:33

I'll give you one example of an invention we have at Visa. This is for making sure accounts are not taken over nefariously by bad actors by stealing your password and your user ID or by social engineering or phishing. Doing that, we are able to see how you type and everybody's typing is a very unique signature, so we are able to score it with AI, behavioral analytics of actually not just the credential itself but the manner in which the credential was entered, and signal if there is a need for us to do a stack of authentication or to validate the transaction with more details. And that's a manifestation of in that particular use case, based on the signals we got, how do we protect the consumer? Because our main session I would call it the word is to protect the consumer and the merchants, and our main session I would call it the word is to protect the consumer and the merchants and our ecosystem, and in different areas. It will be a combination of what we are able to get and add on to it with our own ideas and innovations.

Craig: 20:46

Yeah, okay. Well, I'm going to ask one more question what do you see? How do you see the future for an individual who's browsing websites or walking through a store or just imagining something that they want to buy? Do you have a vision for how that's going to develop?

Rajat: 21:14

how that's going to develop. We just released today a paper in collaboration with the Institute of Future that, jointly with us, is trying to imagine that how will it look like in the future, and it is a very interesting, thought-provoking future that is still being developed and the role we play and how we'll adapt and shape the future is going to be one of the most exciting things for all of us. But one thing is for sure AI agents are going to play a big part. How and what role they play, when every consumer's consent, every consumer's personal preference, every consumer's comfort with transparency, with managing the privacy of the data, by knowing that the value they are getting, whether it is in browsing, whether it is in discovering, whether it's an actual purchasing for you, representing you as a personal assistant, we need to make sure that the trust is maintained and it is fully complied with every law and regulation of the world.

Rajat: 22:17

We operate in 200 countries and territories and so for us, in this case, as these develop, that confines, that trust, that cyber protection, the payment protection, must be paramount. But I think it's evolved in very exciting ways. But it's important for us to be looking right now at things that may not work well, that could cause problems and have both the optimistic mindset and the pessimistic mindset Thinking through that. You're shaking the future correctly, but many of the things you said will probably occur sooner than you think, right now Create an oasis with Thuma, a modern design company that specializes in furniture and home goods.

Craig: 23:04

By stripping away everything but the essential, thuma makes elevated beds with premium materials and intentional details. I'm in the process of reorganizing my house and I'm giving Thuma a serious look for help in renovating and redesigning. Thuma combines the perfect balance of form, craftsmanship and functionality. With over 17,000 five-star reviews, the Thuma Bed Collection is proof that simplicity is the truest form of sophistication. Using the technique of Japanese joinery, pieces are crafted from solid wood and precision cut for a silent, stable foundation With clean lines, subtle curves and minimalist style. The Thuma Bed Collection is available in four signature finishes to match any design aesthetic. Headboard upgrades are available for customization as desired. To get $100 toward your first bed purchase, go to Thuma, that's T-H-U-M-A, dot C-O, slash IonAI, ionai, all run together E-Y-E-O-N-A-I. So for $100 off your first purchase, go to thumacoionai that's thumacoionai to receive $100 off your first bed purchase.

Sonix is the world’s most advanced automated transcription, translation, and subtitling platform. Fast, accurate, and affordable.

Automatically convert your mp3 files to text (txt file), Microsoft Word (docx file), and SubRip Subtitle (srt file) in minutes.

Sonix has many features that you'd love including powerful integrations and APIs, upload many different filetypes, collaboration tools, share transcripts, and easily transcribe your Zoom meetings. Try Sonix for free today.