Plastic card fraud detection using peer group analysis

Abstract

Peer group analysis is an unsupervised method for monitoring behaviour over time. In the context of plastic card fraud detection, this technique can be used to find anomalous transactions. These are transactions that deviate strongly from their peer group and are flagged as potentially fraudulent. Time alignment, the quality of the peer groups and the timeliness of assigning fraud flags to transactions are described. We demonstrate the ability to detect fraud using peer groups with real credit card transaction data and define a novel method for evaluating performance.