Safeguarding Digital Finance from Frauds using ML Technologies in Blockchain Technology

Abstract

The rapid digitization of financial services has resulted in a staggering increase in sophisticated fraud, endangering global economies and damaging public trust. The dynamic nature of current fraud is outpacing classic fraud detection systems, which frequently rely on static, rule-based methods. This study reveals a new hybrid framework that pairs distributed ledger technology for immutable transaction avoidance with Machine Learning (ML) for real-time fraud detection. The fundamental driving force is to address the inherent shortcomings of centralized systems, as well as the lack of an unchangeable audit trail in ML-only solutions. Using a range of classification algorithms, our methodology entails creating separate machine learning pathways for three important financial domains: credit card, UPI, and loan applications. A fraud verdict is subsequently produced using the top-performing model for each domain, which is determined by a thorough analysis of metrics. Through a smart contract, this decision is safely and irrevocably documented on a private blockchain. This study shows how a strong security architecture may be produced by fusing the decentralized trust and immutability of blockchain technology with the predictive performance of machine learning. The findings demonstrate that this integrated approach strengthens the integrity and dependability of digital financial transactions by achieving high performance in fraud detection as well as creating a transparent and impenetrable record.