Elevating fraud detection: machine learning models with computational intelligence optimization

Abstract

The amount of crimes committed online has undoubtedly increased as more people use the internet for e-commerce and other financial transactions. Machine learning algorithms have been created to detect payment fraud in online purchasing in order to address the issue. This study performs a thorough comparative examination of different metaheuristic optimizations as hyperparameter tuning methods; these are particle swarm optimization (PSO) and genetic algorithm (GA). They are used to optimize the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) area under the curve (AUC) of the three machine learning algorithms, namely X-gradient boost, random forest classifier, and light gradient boost machine. Since the study's data are unbalanced, the determined metrics were ROC AUC. PSO offers consistent conditions for finding the best solution, according to our experiment. Without the inclusion of population annihilation strategies, PSO can achieve the greatest results in various situations which are different from GA, a consistent condition for finding the best solution, according to our experiment. Without the inclusion of population annihilation strategies, PSO can achieve the greatest results in various situations. The findings indicate that random forest classifier provided the highest ROC AUC value both before and after the hyperparameter tuning process, with a score of 88.69% attained while utilizing PSO.