Hybrid CNN-LSTM With Attention Mechanism for Robust Credit Card Fraud Detection

In an era marked by rapid technological advancements and a global shift toward cashless transactions, credit card fraud has emerged as a significant challenge, causing substantial financial losses and threatening the security of consumers and financial institutions. The exponential growth of online...

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Main Authors: Iman Akour, Nour Mohamed, Said Salloum
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2025-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11050364/
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author Iman Akour
Nour Mohamed
Said Salloum
author_facet Iman Akour
Nour Mohamed
Said Salloum
author_sort Iman Akour
collection DOAJ
description In an era marked by rapid technological advancements and a global shift toward cashless transactions, credit card fraud has emerged as a significant challenge, causing substantial financial losses and threatening the security of consumers and financial institutions. The exponential growth of online payments necessitates more effective fraud detection mechanisms. Traditional fraud detection methods, including rule-based systems and basic statistical analyses, struggle to keep pace with the evolving strategies employed by fraudsters. This paper proposes a hybrid fraud detection model integrating Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, and an attention mechanism to address these challenges. Each component of the hybrid model is designed to capture specific behavioral representations, with CNNs focusing on spatial features, LSTMs handling temporal sequences, and the attention mechanism highlighting the most relevant features. We utilized a benchmark dataset and applied the Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE) to balance the class distribution. Extensive data preprocessing was conducted to ensure compatibility with the model’s input requirements. The experimental results demonstrated that our hybrid model significantly outperforms traditional machine learning algorithms, achieving an accuracy of 99.93% and a recall of 0.89 on the Credit Card Fraud dataset (CCF). These results highlight the model’s ability to detect fraudulent activities with high precision and reliability. Our hybrid CNN-LSTM-Attention model improves fraud detection by addressing both spatial and temporal data features while dynamically focusing on critical elements. This work not only contributes to the advancement of fraud detection techniques but also provides a framework for future research.
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spelling doaj-art-88bf0a4da42e4dbf92a658540ea1580e2025-08-20T03:50:07ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362025-01-011311405611406810.1109/ACCESS.2025.358325311050364Hybrid CNN-LSTM With Attention Mechanism for Robust Credit Card Fraud DetectionIman Akour0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6914-2213Nour Mohamed1https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6304-2468Said Salloum2Department of Information Systems, University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab EmiratesDepartment of Electrical Engineering, University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab EmiratesSchool of Computing, Skyline University College, Sharjah, United Arab EmiratesIn an era marked by rapid technological advancements and a global shift toward cashless transactions, credit card fraud has emerged as a significant challenge, causing substantial financial losses and threatening the security of consumers and financial institutions. The exponential growth of online payments necessitates more effective fraud detection mechanisms. Traditional fraud detection methods, including rule-based systems and basic statistical analyses, struggle to keep pace with the evolving strategies employed by fraudsters. This paper proposes a hybrid fraud detection model integrating Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, and an attention mechanism to address these challenges. Each component of the hybrid model is designed to capture specific behavioral representations, with CNNs focusing on spatial features, LSTMs handling temporal sequences, and the attention mechanism highlighting the most relevant features. We utilized a benchmark dataset and applied the Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE) to balance the class distribution. Extensive data preprocessing was conducted to ensure compatibility with the model’s input requirements. The experimental results demonstrated that our hybrid model significantly outperforms traditional machine learning algorithms, achieving an accuracy of 99.93% and a recall of 0.89 on the Credit Card Fraud dataset (CCF). These results highlight the model’s ability to detect fraudulent activities with high precision and reliability. Our hybrid CNN-LSTM-Attention model improves fraud detection by addressing both spatial and temporal data features while dynamically focusing on critical elements. This work not only contributes to the advancement of fraud detection techniques but also provides a framework for future research.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11050364/Attentionconvolutional neural networkscredit card frauddetectionlong-short term memory
spellingShingle Iman Akour
Nour Mohamed
Said Salloum
Hybrid CNN-LSTM With Attention Mechanism for Robust Credit Card Fraud Detection
IEEE Access
Attention
convolutional neural networks
credit card fraud
detection
long-short term memory
title Hybrid CNN-LSTM With Attention Mechanism for Robust Credit Card Fraud Detection
title_full Hybrid CNN-LSTM With Attention Mechanism for Robust Credit Card Fraud Detection
title_fullStr Hybrid CNN-LSTM With Attention Mechanism for Robust Credit Card Fraud Detection
title_full_unstemmed Hybrid CNN-LSTM With Attention Mechanism for Robust Credit Card Fraud Detection
title_short Hybrid CNN-LSTM With Attention Mechanism for Robust Credit Card Fraud Detection
title_sort hybrid cnn lstm with attention mechanism for robust credit card fraud detection
topic Attention
convolutional neural networks
credit card fraud
detection
long-short term memory
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11050364/
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AT nourmohamed hybridcnnlstmwithattentionmechanismforrobustcreditcardfrauddetection
AT saidsalloum hybridcnnlstmwithattentionmechanismforrobustcreditcardfrauddetection