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A12 BUSINESS
Tuesday 29 augusT 2023
How PayPal is using AI to combat

fraud, and make it easier to pay

By KEN SWEET
AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Artificial
intelligence has been the
buzzword of 2023 ever since
ChatGPT made its public
debut earlier this year, with
businesses, schools, univer-
sities and even non-profits
looking for ways to inte-
grate AI in their operations.
John Kim, chief product
officer for PayPal, spoke
with The Associated Press
about how the company
is using the early prolifera- Associated Press Illustration/Peter Hamlin
tion of artificial intelligence
technologies in its business, A: We’re planning on stores, every product con-
as well as PayPal’s future launching three new prod- versation. Some people
in payments when there’s ucts with ties to AI in the have been skeptical, and
so much competition. The next 120 days. For exam- I think some skepticism is
interview has been edited ple, we have a checkout healthy. For example, we
for length and clarity. feature we are rolling out want to use AI to increase
Q: How have security issues that uses AI to keep track our chatbots’ capability
changed since you’ve of all the permutations of to engage with custom-
been in this role or similar your addresses and per- ers, but how much do we
roles? How much more sonal information that you invest in such technolo-
complicated or sophisti- might use, and use AI to gy which can be expen-
cated are threats or op- predict the right one to use sive to develop and run
portunities to protect cus- with the right merchant. when a customer service
tomer data? We currently try to detect agent could do it better?
A: One way you you can unusual patterns for ex- Cost is going to be a mas-
put it is that the fraud is ample, patterns where sive issue. But in this short
a pretty big business, it’s fraudsters are trying to test timetable since ChatGPT
growing and getting more your stolen card out to see launched in March, I think
sophisticated by the day. It if it’s good or not and alert you can’t dismiss any claim
used to be that you would you through the PayPal you hear about AI at the
get, let’s say, an email sent wallet so you can get that moment because it’s mov-
to you and you’d find some- card shut down with your ing so fast.
thing off about it, right? Like bank quickly. But detect- Q: A lot of competition has
there’s a misspelling and ing these patterns can get entered into the payments
you think “Gosh, I don’t really complicated, and space in the last several
see this person misspelling the patterns can change years. Apple Pay. Google
this common thing” or the on the fly, so AI we be- Pay. Buy now, pay later.
email seems to imply that lieve will help us anticipate PayPal is the oldest com-
it doesn’t have a deep un- these changes and keep pany in the online pay-
derstanding of who I am. us ahead. ments industry. What chal-
Then it became voices Q: But on that same point, lenges have there been in
over the phone trying to where do you think AI is be- trying to differentiate Pay-
convince you to do some- ing oversold in some ways, Pal from the competition?
thing. Now people can or where do you think that A: PayPal really was a
create whole identities us- the use case in your indus- one-of-a-kind company
ing AI. try isn’t really there quite for much of the early part
Q: How are you integrating yet? of its life. So back then it
AI into the work you’re do- A: I think AI has captured was really about just get-
ing? Where do you see the a lot of people’s imagina- ting scale. You didn’t really
most promise for AI in pay- tions this year. It’s made its have to sell the value prop-
ments? way to boardrooms, into osition. But now we really
have to focus on the value
proposition. Customers ev-
ery day choose how they
wish to pay for things, so
you need to provide value
above just being a method
to pay, like security and
fraud protection, or let-
ting people now they are
fully protected while at the
same time making us the
easiest way to pay.q