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Guardian Pay’s home screen asks the user to enter the payee, amount, and payment message so the request can be screened for scams first
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Guardian Pay rate the $50 Green Garden Landscaping payment as low risk(5/100)automatically mark it ready for the normal PayPal checkout flow
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Guardian Pay rates the $75.Unknown Electronic Store payment as medium risk (45/100)holds it until a guardian reviews and approve transaction
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Guardian Pay score the $250 Unknown Gift Card Support payment 95/100, flags strong scam indicator such as pressure tactic,blocks it outright
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Guardian Pay blocks payment as critical scam risk. It lists the warning signs, gives safety advice and confirms that no PayPal order created
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After the payment passes Guardian Pay’s check, the user is redirected to the PayPal sandbox login page to sign in and authorize the payment.
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Once logged in, PayPal displays the checkout screen for the $75.00 payment, where the user selects a funding source and click Pay to confirm
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PayPal confirms the $75.00 payment to Unknown Electronic Store as completed and Guardian Pay then show the order ID along with a return link
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VS Code .env.example: placeholder keys for PayPal, Gemini, Flask, and app URL
💡 Inspiration
Digital payments have made life easier, but they have also created new risks, especially for senior citizens and people who may not easily recognize online payment scams.
We wanted to build a solution that helps families protect their loved ones while still allowing them to make digital payments independently.
That idea led us to Guardian Pay — an AI-powered family payment protection system.
🚀 What it does
Guardian Pay analyzes payment transactions using Google Gemini AI and helps identify potentially suspicious or risky transactions before they are completed.
The system provides three possible decisions:
- AUTO_PAY: Allows transactions identified as safe to proceed.
- HOLD: Holds uncertain transactions for guardian review.
- BLOCK: Blocks transactions identified as high risk.
Family members can act as guardians, helping review suspicious transactions and approve payments when necessary.
⚙️ How we built it
We developed Guardian Pay as a web-based application with an integrated AI-powered transaction risk analysis system.
- Transaction Monitoring: Users initiate payments through the application.
- AI Risk Analysis: Google Gemini analyzes transaction details and evaluates potential fraud risks.
- Intelligent Decisions: The system determines whether a transaction should be automatically allowed, held for review, or blocked.
- Family Protection: Guardians can review transactions that require additional approval.
- Payment Integration: PayPal Sandbox enables payment processing and demonstration of the payment workflow.
We also deployed the application using Render and configured the backend to run with Gunicorn.
🛠️ Technologies used
- Google Gemini AI for intelligent transaction risk analysis.
- Python and Flask for backend development.
- PayPal Sandbox for payment integration and checkout.
- Gunicorn for application serving.
- Render for cloud deployment.
- GitHub for source code management and version control.
🧠 Challenges we faced
One of our biggest challenges was connecting AI-based risk analysis with an actual payment workflow.
We needed to ensure that AI decisions could control the payment process through different outcomes: AUTO_PAY, HOLD, and BLOCK.
We also worked through deployment configuration, environment variables, API integration, and connecting the application to a cloud hosting environment.
📚 What we learned
Building Guardian Pay helped us gain practical experience in integrating generative AI with real-world applications, implementing payment workflows, handling API integrations, and deploying a full-stack application.
More importantly, we learned how technology can be used to address real-world problems and make digital payments safer.
🔮 What's next?
We envision expanding Guardian Pay with more advanced fraud detection, customizable family protection settings, improved guardian notifications, and support for additional payment platforms.
Our mission is simple: Make digital payments safer without taking away financial independence.
