A Machine Learning Approach to Credit Card Transaction Fraud Prediction

Credit card fraud has a significant impact on the financial industry and is now a growing concern. Machine learning can minimize bias against legitimate transactions and enable accurate identification of fraud. This study explores machine learning techniques to address category imbalances in credit...

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Main Author: Liu Zixuan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: EDP Sciences 2025-01-01
Series:SHS Web of Conferences
Online Access:https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2025/09/shsconf_icdde2025_02017.pdf
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author Liu Zixuan
author_facet Liu Zixuan
author_sort Liu Zixuan
collection DOAJ
description Credit card fraud has a significant impact on the financial industry and is now a growing concern. Machine learning can minimize bias against legitimate transactions and enable accurate identification of fraud. This study explores machine learning techniques to address category imbalances in credit card fraud detection datasets to mitigate economic losses while improving model performance. The results show that logistic regression outperforms other classifiers, including support vector classifiers (SVC), K-nearest neighbor classifiers (KNN), and decision trees, achieving an optimal balance between fraud detection and minimizing false positives. By conducting data processing techniques such as feature scaling and dataset balancing, the model shows an effective identification of fraudulent transactions that rarely exist in a vast number of legitimate transactions. In addition, simple neural networks trained on oversampled data reveal higher recall rates but at the cost of higher false positives, highlighting the tradeoff between accuracy and fraud detection sensitivity. These findings underscore the importance of choosing models that can both effectively detect fraud and minimize disruption to legitimate transactions, which also provide valuable insights for financial institutions seeking to enhance their fraud detection systems.
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institution Kabale University
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publishDate 2025-01-01
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spelling doaj-art-9687141300f94cdc8b0e5859d0bdefe92025-08-20T03:31:36ZengEDP SciencesSHS Web of Conferences2261-24242025-01-012180201710.1051/shsconf/202521802017shsconf_icdde2025_02017A Machine Learning Approach to Credit Card Transaction Fraud PredictionLiu Zixuan0College of Arts and Sciences, Boston UniversityCredit card fraud has a significant impact on the financial industry and is now a growing concern. Machine learning can minimize bias against legitimate transactions and enable accurate identification of fraud. This study explores machine learning techniques to address category imbalances in credit card fraud detection datasets to mitigate economic losses while improving model performance. The results show that logistic regression outperforms other classifiers, including support vector classifiers (SVC), K-nearest neighbor classifiers (KNN), and decision trees, achieving an optimal balance between fraud detection and minimizing false positives. By conducting data processing techniques such as feature scaling and dataset balancing, the model shows an effective identification of fraudulent transactions that rarely exist in a vast number of legitimate transactions. In addition, simple neural networks trained on oversampled data reveal higher recall rates but at the cost of higher false positives, highlighting the tradeoff between accuracy and fraud detection sensitivity. These findings underscore the importance of choosing models that can both effectively detect fraud and minimize disruption to legitimate transactions, which also provide valuable insights for financial institutions seeking to enhance their fraud detection systems.https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2025/09/shsconf_icdde2025_02017.pdf
spellingShingle Liu Zixuan
A Machine Learning Approach to Credit Card Transaction Fraud Prediction
SHS Web of Conferences
title A Machine Learning Approach to Credit Card Transaction Fraud Prediction
title_full A Machine Learning Approach to Credit Card Transaction Fraud Prediction
title_fullStr A Machine Learning Approach to Credit Card Transaction Fraud Prediction
title_full_unstemmed A Machine Learning Approach to Credit Card Transaction Fraud Prediction
title_short A Machine Learning Approach to Credit Card Transaction Fraud Prediction
title_sort machine learning approach to credit card transaction fraud prediction
url https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2025/09/shsconf_icdde2025_02017.pdf
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