AI vital to securing digital economy, says Mastercard's Nitendra Rajput

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a cornerstone for ensuring security in the financial sector, said Nitendra Rajput, Senior Vice President & Head, AI Garage, Mastercard.

Speaking at a fireside chat with Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory at TechSparks 2023 in Delhi, Nitendra shed light on the increasing need to secure the digital economy.

"When you are making a digital transaction, we need to secure the entire ecosystem to make sure that there are no frauds. Decades of digitisation, we have been creating footmarks," Nitendra said.

"By using AI, we have detected fraudulent transactions, safeguarding $35 billion in revenue over the last two years," he added.

In his current role at Mastercard, he leads the AI Garage unit in India that works on solving machine learning (ML) problems in the financial sector. Before this, Nitendra spent nearly 18 years at IBM Research, working on different aspects of machine learning, software engineering and mobile sensing.

Mastercard's AI Garage guides startups to build AI-based products and solutions that facilitate secure and efficient transactions, added Rajput.

"In the vast cyber world, transactions leave footprints, which in turn leads to new threats like ransomware and hacking to emerge. AI continuously learns to secure in such systems. The cybersecurity space is set for growth," he added.

Mastercard recently signed an MoU with the UAE's Office for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications to boost the region's artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and readiness.

The partnership follows the opening of Mastercard's latest hub for advanced artificial intelligence and cybertechnology in Dubai. Some of its existing centres are located in the US, Canada, and India.

According to PwC, AI is expected to contribute over $15 trillion to the global economy by 2030, addressing challenges such as fraud reduction and access to financial services.

Headquartered in New York, Mastercard is the second-largest payment-processing corporation worldwide, which offers a range of payment transaction processing and other related payment services.