Visa Reports More Than 500 Generative AI Applications

Visa reportedly uses more than 500 generative artificial intelligence applications and is looking to add more.

The company aims to gain the benefits of the technology sooner than others and keep up with the increasingly sophisticated threats the industry faces from fraudsters, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday (Nov. 1).

“This is a time when I think we have to innovate very fast,” Visa President of Technology Rajat Taneja said, per the report.

Visa’s range of AI tools includes one that finds security bugs in code, one that helps subscribers select their billing cycles, and chatbots that serve as subject matter experts on specific parts of the business, according to the report.

The company’s investments in AI and data infrastructure have added up to $3.3 billion over the last 10 years, the report said.

Measuring the return on investment can be a challenge, the report said. While the ROI of AI tools meant to prevent fraud can be gauged by the dollar value of fraud they prevented, that of productivity apps can be more difficult to determine.

Looking ahead, Taneja said he would like to see teams of “AI employees” overseen by humans, per the report, with each AI employee focused on a task and each team of eight to 10 such tools overseen by one human.

Generative AI is gaining traction in the financial sector, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Banking on AI: Financial Services Sector Harnesses Generative AI for Security and Service.”

The report found that 83% of financial professionals believe their institution is interested in generative AI and 32% of these professionals expect to use AI to provide more personalized services to clients.

Mastercard said Tuesday (Oct. 29) that it launched the first of many new generative AI applications that it plans to develop via its new in-house infrastructure for building and deploying knowledge agent tools.

The company’s first such digital assistant is designed to simplify the customer onboarding process by automating routine tasks and answering each customer’s questions during the process, using its knowledge base that includes Mastercard’s existing onboarding documentation.

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