How PayPal Is Taking a Chance on AI to Fight Fraud

Like all financial companies PayPal worries about fraudsters, armed with stolen credentials, logging into a legitimate customer's account and using a credit card linked to it. "We want to stop these guys at our door," said Hui Wang, senior director of global risk and data sciences at PayPal. The company has more reason than most to worry, given its high visibility and massive payment volumes. It generates 10,900 in payments every second, and it handled 4.9 billion payments in 2015 for 188 million customers in 202 countries. To detect suspicious activity, and more importantly to separate false alarms from true fraud, PayPal uses a homegrown artificial intelligence engine built with open-source tools.