#245 Rajat Taneja: Visa's President of Technology Reveals Their $3.3 Billion AI Strategy

Apr 2, 2025

Rajat Taneja, President of Technology at Visa, shares insights into the company’s bold $3.3 billion AI strategy. He reveals how Visa stops over $40 billion in fraud annually using deep learning models trained on vast transaction data. Taneja discusses the exciting concept of agentic commerce and Visa's pioneering role in AI since the 1990s. With a focus on behavioral biometrics and real-time decision-making, he explores how AI is reshaping payment security and the future of financial interactions.

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ANECDOTE

Visa's Fraud Prevention Success

Visa stopped over $40 billion in fraud last year using AI-powered models.
These models mimic bank decisions in real-time, ensuring seamless transactions even with communication issues.

INSIGHT

Visa's Long-Standing AI Integration

AI is deeply integrated into Visa's operations, powering fraud detection, cybersecurity, and infrastructure.
Visa has been using AI for decades, even during periods of low AI adoption.

INSIGHT

Visa's AI Model Development

Visa builds and manages its own AI models for fraud detection and other applications, rather than using open-source models.
They have been using Generative AI techniques since 2018 and have an abstraction layer to manage multiple models.

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Visa’s President of Technology, Rajat Taneja, pulls back the curtain on the $3.3 billion AI transformation powering one of the world’s most trusted financial networks.

In this episode, Taneja shares how Visa—a company processing over $16 trillion annually across 300 billion real-time transactions—is leveraging AI not just to stop fraud, but to redefine the future of commerce.

From deep neural networks trained on decades of transaction data to generative AI tools powering next-gen agentic systems, Visa has quietly been an AI-first company since the 1990s. Now, with 500+ petabytes of data and 2,900 open APIs, it’s preparing for a future where agents, biometrics, and behavioral signals shape every interaction.

Taneja also reveals how Visa’s models can mimic bank decisions in milliseconds, stop enumeration attacks, and even detect fraud based on how you type. This is AI at global scale—with zero room for error.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

How Visa’s $3.3B data platform powers 24/7 AI-driven decisioning

The fraud models behind stopping $40 billion in criminal transactions
What “agentic commerce” means—and why Visa is betting big on it
How Visa uses behavioral biometrics to detect account takeovers
Why Visa rebuilt its infrastructure for the AI era—10 years ahead of the curve
The role of generative AI, biometric identity, and APIs in the next wave of payments

The future of commerce isn’t just cashless—it’s intelligent, autonomous, and trust-driven.

If you’re curious about how AI is redefining payments, security, and digital identity at massive scale, this episode is essential viewing.

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(00:00) Introduction

(02:57) Meet Rajat Taneja, Visa’s President of Technology

(04:02) Scaling AI for 300 Billion Transactions Annually

(05:27) The Models Behind Visa’s Fraud Detection

(08:02) Visa’s In-House AI Models vs Open-Source Tools

(10:54) Inside Visa’s $3.3B AI Data Platform

(12:29) Visa’s Role in E-Commerce Innovation

(16:24) Biometrics, Identity & Tokenization at Visa

(21:14) Visa’s Vision for AI-Driven Commerce