Discover’s Data Manager Helps Foil Credit Card Fraud

To help prevent unauthorized transactions, IEEE Senior Member Pankaj Gupta is developing tools using data integration, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and real-time account monitoring. Gupta is a manager of data and analytics engineering for Discover, and he works from Raleigh, N.C.

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

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

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

He says he enjoys his job but says he never meant to work in financial services, a field where he has built a nearly two-decade-long career.

As a youngster, he was curious about how things worked and would take apart gadgets his father brought home.

“My father worked at BSNL, a government telecom organization, and often took me to his office,” Gupta says. “There I would watch phones in operation and telecom operators connecting trunk calls. At home, we even had a few old, nonfunctional phones lying around.”

While at school, he enjoyed participating in science and math olympiads and exhibitions, he says.

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

“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 make life better for people,” he says.

He also became fascinated by the nearby steel factory’s massive machines, its chimneys, and the constant activity around them, he says.

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

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

In India, universities hold placement events on campus to recruit graduating students. Gupta says he was lucky enough to receive a job offer from the Indian IT company Satyam Computer Services, which is now defunct. He started there in 2006 after earning his bachelor’s degree in engineering and electrical engineering. Satyam assigned him to work on a software program for a financial services company.

That’s when he pivoted to software engineering.

Gupta says that although software development wasn’t his preferred career path, it enabled 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 for the past 18 years.

His time at a variety of financial institutions has 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 has worked.

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

Using AI and machine learning to combat fraud

Gupta left Satyam in 2011 to join Mphasis, an IT solutions company in Bangalore, India, as a senior software developer focused on extracting, transforming, and loading (ETL) data. After a year, he left for Wipro Technologies in Bengaluru. As a technical lead, he was assigned 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, N.J. He helped create a world-class analytics platform and modernize the bank’s reporting systems. He also worked on systems that use a zero-trust security approach, which he describes as one whereby banks do not automatically trust any user or system. Instead, they verify every transaction.

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

He also developed scalable data partitioning techniques that organize and split 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 more quickly, handle growth without slowing down, and support real-time decision-making,” he says. “These innovations have helped my organization respond to threats faster.”

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

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 occur, and the typical amount paid to creditors. The system is then trained to look for anomalies.

In simple terms, the system assigns a risk score to each transaction, usually on a scale based on patterns it has learned, Gupta says. If the score crosses a certain threshold, the bank might take preventive action. If, for instance, there is an unusual purchase in a location far from where the customer lives, the bank will send the customer a message, looking to verify whether the transaction is legitimate. If the customer does not recognize the purchase, the bank blocks the transaction.

Staying connected to tech pros

Gupta joined IEEE in 2023 “to connect with a global network of technology professionals, and to stay updated in the latest advancements in engineering and computing,” 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 provided me an opportunity to attend conferences and share my expertise with the wider engineering community.”

AI’s impact on engineering

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

“Technology is changing very rapidly,” he says. “What is working right now might change in six months, so adaptability is your biggest 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 most needed, he says, is building AI models and training them.

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

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

“Build your professional network and seek mentors who can guide you through both technical and career challenges.”