Discover Data Manager helps thwart credit card fraud

To help prevent unauthorized transactions, IEEE Senior Fellow Pankaj Gupta develops tools using data integration, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and real-time account monitoring. Gupta is the head of data engineering and analytics for Discover Financial Services, based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

“The innovations developed by my fraud department have helped my organization respond more quickly to threats and adapt more easily to future needs,” he says.

This year, he received Discover’s President’s Award, the company’s highest employee honor. It is awarded to those who have achieved exceptional business results while demonstrating the company’s values.

Gupta also became a guest member of the Forbes Technology Council, a community of experienced executives from across industries, selected based on their professional achievements and leadership experience.

He says he loves his job, but says he never intended to work in financial services, a field in which he has built a career spanning nearly two decades.

When he was young, he was curious about how things worked and took apart the gadgets his father brought home.

“My father worked at BSNL, a government telecom organization, and would often take me to his office,” says Gupta. “There, I looked at working phones and telcos connecting long distance calls. At home, we even had a few old, non-working phones lying around.”

At school, he enjoyed participating in science and math Olympiads and exhibitions, he said.

Taking note of his curiosity and problem-solving skills, his teachers encouraged him to study engineering. He was particularly interested in learning electrical engineering because of his interest in the electrical substations that he and his father had checked.

“Growing up in a small town [Dongargarh, which is famous for the Bamleshwari Temple, a popular Hindu pilgrimage site]I saw how technology could help solve problems and improve people’s lives,” he says.

He also became fascinated by the massive machinery of the nearby steel plant, its smokestacks and the constant activity around them, he said.

“I noticed how everything seemed to work together in a coordinated way. Seeing such complex engineering in action at such a young age seeded my interest in technology,” he says. “This exposure inspired me to pursue a career in electrical engineering.”

In 2002, he enrolled in the EE program at the Christian College of Engineering and Technology, in Bhilai, India, a 180-minute train ride each way. He left at 5 a.m. and returned at 6:30 p.m. During his senior year, his family began to struggle financially, he says, so his priority was to find a job immediately after graduation to support himself.

In India, universities organize on-campus placement events to recruit graduate students. Gupta says he was fortunate to receive a job offer from the now-defunct Indian IT company Satyam Computer Services. He started there in 2006 after obtaining his bachelor’s degree in engineering and electrical engineering. Satyam assigned him the task of working on software for a financial services company.

That’s when he turned to software engineering.

Gupta says that while software development wasn’t his preferred career path, it allowed him to support himself and his parents.

He still has a soft spot for electrical engineering, he says, but he hasn’t changed fields or industries in 18 years.

His time at various financial institutions allowed him to travel the world to work in other countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom, he says. The United States is the fourth country where he works.

“It’s been an exciting journey, experiencing different work cultures and technologies,” he says.

Using AI and machine learning to fight fraud

Gupta left Satyam in 2011 to join Mphasis, an IT solutions company in Bangalore, India, as a senior software developer focused on data extraction, transformation and loading (ETL). After a year, he moved to Wipro Technologies in Bangalore. As a technical manager, he was posted as a consultant for Capital One in Bangalore in an offshore development center. He led a team of 10 employees working on data integration projects including generic frameworks.

He moved to the United States in 2017 to work as an associate vice president at JPMorgan Chase in Jersey City, New Jersey. He helped create a world-class analytics platform and modernize the bank’s reporting systems. He has also worked on systems that use a zero-trust security approach, which he describes as one in which banks do not automatically trust any user or system. Instead, they verify every transaction.

“This significantly reduces the risk of fraud or unauthorized access,” he says.

He also developed scalable data partitioning techniques that organize and divide large volumes of information into more manageable pieces.

“I believe that as AI advances, other innovations will evolve.”

“This allows the system to process data faster, handle growth without slowing down, and support real-time decision-making,” he explains. “These innovations have helped my organization respond more quickly to threats. »

He joined Discover in 2019 and worked his way up from senior data engineer for the data and analytics group to head of data engineering. He has developed AI-enhanced data pipelines to train models to make automated decisions in real time.

AI and machine learning systems can prevent fraudulent transactions by collecting information about a customer’s typical financial habits over time, such as whether banking is done online or through an app, the time of day transactions take place, and the typical amount paid to creditors. The system is then trained to look for anomalies.

Simply put, the system assigns a risk score to each transaction, usually on a scale based on the patterns it has learned, Gupta says. If the score exceeds a certain threshold, the bank can take preventive measures. If, for example, an unusual purchase takes place in a location far from the customer’s place of residence, the bank will send a message to the customer to verify whether the transaction is legitimate. If the customer does not recognize the purchase, the bank blocks the transaction.

Stay Connected to Tech Professionals

Gupta joined IEEE in 2023 “to connect with a global network of technology professionals and stay up to date with the latest advances in engineering and computer science,” he says. He was elevated to senior member later that year.

“Membership has helped me access world-class research through the IEEE Xplore Digital Library,” he says. “It also gave me the opportunity to attend conferences and share my expertise with the broader engineering community.”

The impact of AI on engineering

His advice to young engineers is to stay curious and keep learning.

“Technology is changing very quickly,” he says. “What works now could change in six months, so adaptability is your greatest strength.”

He predicts that AI agents will eventually take over repetitive tasks such as those related to automation, coding and programming. Where engineers will be needed most, he says, is in creating AI models and training them.

“Engineers will find significant growth opportunities in these areas,” he says. “I believe that as AI advances, other innovations will evolve.

“Focus on solving real problems, not just creating solutions for their own sake.

“Build your professional network and seek out mentors who can guide you through technical and professional challenges. »