AI and the Future of Work: Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace, Business, Ethics, HR, and IT for AI Enthusiasts, Leaders and Academics 358: Inside Mastercard’s AI Adoption Journey: CTO George Maddaloni on Building Trust, Detecting Fraud, and the Future of Payments
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Oct 20, 2025 George Maddaloni, Executive Vice President and CTO at Mastercard, shares insights from his extensive tech leadership background. He discusses the importance of trust and innovation within the complex payments landscape. The conversation highlights Mastercard's decade of AI experience, emphasizing how it transformed fraud detection and boosted employee comfort with new technology. Maddaloni envisions a future where payments are faster and nearly invisible through next-gen tech like wearables and edge computing, positioning Mastercard to compete with innovative startups.
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From Router Rookie To Tech Leader
- George started as a young software engineer at AT&T and discovered networking by configuring his first Cisco router at Bell Labs.
- That early experience shifted his career from coding to leading large technical organizations.
Decades-Long AI Foundation Pays Off
- Mastercard has used AI in its decisioning and fraud platforms for over a decade, enabling low-latency inferencing at massive scale.
- Applying newer neural techniques boosted accuracy and cut false positives significantly, showing foundation-model math can improve classical tasks.
Generative Techniques Shrink False Positives
- Generative AI techniques improved Mastercard's Decision Intelligence product, reducing false positives by about 80% in tests.
- Faster and more accurate decisioning removes consumer friction while preserving fraud protection.