#41: Smarter Disputes: How AI Is Reshaping Chargeback Management with Roenen Ben-Ami, Co-Founder of Justt

[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Fentropriner, our first episode of 2026. [SPEAKER_01]: This is Dave and Eli, and we're here today with Ronin Benami from Just. [SPEAKER_01]: And I am really looking forward to this conversation. [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for joining us.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me very excited. [SPEAKER_01]: On this podcast, we cover everything, FinTech and entrepreneurship, your co-founder of your business, your infintech, your en risk. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm looking forward to learning all about it. [SPEAKER_01]: So to start off the podcast, I tell us about you.

[SPEAKER_01]: I can see from your LinkedIn, you had a pretty long extent in the IDF, and when into FinTech, looks like and then starting your own business. [SPEAKER_01]: So dive into more detail about all of the above. [SPEAKER_01]: Tell us who you are and how you can be in the position you've been. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I grew up in the FinTech space really started on the anti fraud site of things and what was interesting when I saw the anti fraud site is it was being revolutionized by technology during that time it was machine learning having the right methodologies with the right technology.

[SPEAKER_02]: I actually worked with a company called Simplex. [SPEAKER_02]: That was purchased by Nouvey. [SPEAKER_02]: They were the first PSP to really fast to see at the crypto transactions with the credit card and they had to have a really strong and they'd fraud so we didn't pour that market because in the crypto space here, really have a really tough fraud to tackle. [SPEAKER_02]: Something I say to my our employees today is keep asking us questions, and though you'll ask us questions we didn't ask ourselves [SPEAKER_02]: That's what I experienced and what I saw.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's simplex when they were a young company. [SPEAKER_02]: They had one acquiring bank that they were processing through behind the stains as a PSP, which is really risky and they needed that foundation to build out additional acquiring banks. [SPEAKER_02]: We didn't have a merchant screening in Monitoring Team or fraud and charge back monitoring team risking clients. [SPEAKER_02]: I met a lot of people who've been in the industry longer than me and really loved.

[SPEAKER_02]: the world of payments. [SPEAKER_02]: That's the ones I learned about that and I moved over from the broad side of things I've tried to tackle the true fraud and built out the payment infrastructure for simplex. [SPEAKER_02]: There are initial payment interface infrastructure. [SPEAKER_02]: What I really saw there is [SPEAKER_02]: You can have a great Amtite fraud solution that's stopping true fraud.

[SPEAKER_02]: You can have a great merchant screening in monitoring and making sure you're working with legitimate merchants that are providing goods and services properly. [SPEAKER_02]: But chargebacks still come in. [SPEAKER_02]: And they're not true fraud charge backs and they're not true service claims as the category of the friendly fraud. [SPEAKER_02]: First party misuse these illegitimate chargebacks for coming in.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's where my eyes opened up to this, this pain point that I was suffering from and the merchants that were processing through us were suffering was well people charging back after the fact even though they really did receive the good and service. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_02]: And many times it's an innocent mistake someone else in the family made the transaction or they forgot what they purchased. [SPEAKER_02]: They don't recognize the descriptor the name that's on their credit card statement and then they make that claim or actual criminal activity.

[SPEAKER_02]: I drove so many times it's like a gateway drug. [SPEAKER_02]: You do first charge back. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a legitimate claim and then you realize how. [SPEAKER_02]: easy it is to do and then a lot of people start using it as a form of getting free goods and services.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ronan on a lot of my friends are ecommerce guys and this is the chargeback is something that drives them insane and one of the things obviously I didn't know about just [SPEAKER_00]: before, but one of the things is that the process of charge backs, how they were traditionally done and dealing with them was a disaster. [SPEAKER_00]: So can you explain to us, you know, how it was being dealt before and and what are you guys doing differently, uh, to improve. [UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that was really the, when I uncovered the problem and I first, we only had a handful of charge back. [SPEAKER_02]: So we were a small and I started doing it myself in the beginning as a side project. [SPEAKER_02]: And then I started hiring a few analysts next to me doing the job and just the problem grew and grew. [SPEAKER_02]: And what I noticed is that the manual process, you can tailor it to a certain level [SPEAKER_02]: But it's not a scalable solution.

[SPEAKER_02]: The volumes grow and the volumes fluctuate. [SPEAKER_02]: So sometimes get to all the cases. [SPEAKER_02]: And then another month, I would have cases I couldn't get to. [SPEAKER_02]: So I either leave the small dollar cases on the table or I called red.

[SPEAKER_02]: I would have this code red template that we'd shrink our templates. [SPEAKER_02]: So we could at least submit something instead of getting a 0% 1 rate, but it had a lower 1 rate than we actually deserve. [SPEAKER_02]: didn't allow us to get the win-ravy deserved. [SPEAKER_02]: And I never saw how I can improve.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was always focused on dealing with the case that I had. [SPEAKER_02]: I can never even improve the solution where am I actually falling short. [SPEAKER_02]: That's what also existed on the market. [SPEAKER_02]: And I looked for a solution to help me at the time.

[SPEAKER_02]: There was either these manual teams doing it for me or automated templates. [SPEAKER_02]: And when you automate a template, [SPEAKER_02]: You lose the ability to tailor each and every case, like a human's tailoring it. [SPEAKER_02]: So your win rate goes down as well. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, so you have the scale, but you don't have the tailoring.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then there was a spinal solution I saw in the market, which was like the tool for chargebacks. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like a CRM for chargebacks. [SPEAKER_02]: Instead of taking 30, 40 minutes a case, you could do it in five or 10 minutes with this tool. [SPEAKER_02]: So I had a team of 15 analysts at one point handling chargebacks.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can move it down to seven analysts, but not to pay for this tool, and again, when the volumes go through the roof, I can't get to all the cases. [SPEAKER_02]: So none of the solutions on the market seem to solve my pain point, and I said their solution is needed that can tailor the response of each and every case to a higher degree than a human [SPEAKER_02]: And that was the vision of just when we first began. [SPEAKER_02]: We said, we need to build a technology with the method right methodology that will allow us to do that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what we call today dynamic arguments. [SPEAKER_02]: When the data comes into our system, the system is able to pick and choose which arguments to use, what order to put those arguments, what screenshots to add and in what order to have those screenshots that will give that specific pace, [SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes data can help your pace, and sometimes data can hurt your case, and the system picks and chooses when to use the evidence and what scenario.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you get a system that is tailoring your evidence and it's taking to account with the PSP it's going through with the card team, the reason code, be sure that's gonna be reviewing your evidence and the data available in order to tailor that case. [SPEAKER_02]: Something I always say in the chargeback space, [SPEAKER_02]: And build a strong charge back solution, you need to know the card scheme rules and regulations and what data you need in order to fit those rules and regulations, but you also need to know where your evidence that your building is going, going through the key through the card scheme networks and ultimately to an issue or to an individual that has about three minutes to review that document that could be 20 pages long, they're not reading all 20 pages, they don't have time to read all 20 pages.

[SPEAKER_02]: How can we help that issuer decide in the merchant's favor in a faster way? [SPEAKER_02]: Kind of like building a resume. [SPEAKER_01]: So to make sure I understand this, so as a payment processor, dealing with this, uh, [SPEAKER_01]: with a charge-draft scenario. [SPEAKER_01]: Your job is to assemble all this evidence and there's governing rules.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm guessing these are different by country that sort of determine how you're supposed to rule and it's the issue where that rules in the end and so you as a payment processor. [SPEAKER_01]: That's what you're doing a assembling a case for someone to rule on. [SPEAKER_01]: Is all right? [SPEAKER_02]: For something the case on behalf of a merchant, [SPEAKER_02]: We're integrated with the Merchants Payment Processors in order to pull the charge back data.

[SPEAKER_02]: And once we build the evidence, submit it back to the payment processor. [SPEAKER_02]: Once the pain is processed or receives that evidence that we've submitted, they submit it through the card scheme network, but they've these as v-roll system, MasterCard MasterCount system, and it ultimately gets to the issue on the other side who needs to review the available. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's okay. [SPEAKER_01]: You prove that of charge back is a bullshit charge back for lack of a better word.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so it really depends on the reason code and you're right. [SPEAKER_02]: It depends on the reason code, but the in areas of the world, the reason code, the card scheme. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, let's take for example, a fraud claim, a general fraud claim that the card hole is claiming that it, it wasn't them that made the transaction. [SPEAKER_02]: or somebody connected to the true card holder.

[SPEAKER_02]: So in order to do that, we're looking at the garifications that they went through, the end user flow, all of that, what exists on that merchant's platform in the checkout process, but we're also going and using a third-party enrichment solution. [SPEAKER_02]: So we take information like the IP, the phone, the billing, the email, and we send it to third-party enrichment sources to give us additional information about those data sources. [SPEAKER_02]: What's the name behind the email?

[SPEAKER_02]: What names are behind that billing address? [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it was a family member that made the transaction on the card and not the true art holder. [SPEAKER_02]: That's an illegitimate fraud claim. [SPEAKER_02]: If your family member made the transaction.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we try to connect them and the family members through the billing address. [SPEAKER_02]: The distance between the IP and the phone and the IP in the billing. [SPEAKER_02]: And let's see, there was a phone verification. [SPEAKER_02]: actually try and tell the good story of why this is a good transaction and not actually true fraud.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what is the most common, I guess, targetback reasons, the people claiming fraud is if people saying they didn't receive the product, like what are the top five and how do you guys deal with them usually? [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, so it's a great point because it really depends on the industry. [SPEAKER_02]: Their certain industries where we see more service related charge backs happening and others where fraud dominates, right? [SPEAKER_02]: I could tell you, for example, we work a lot in the food delivery.

[SPEAKER_02]: industry. [SPEAKER_02]: The fraud reason code dominates the food delivery industry. [SPEAKER_02]: But other industries like any cameras, you can sometimes in regards to physical goods, you could sometimes see a 50-50 display. [SPEAKER_02]: It depends how strong the the character of the merchant's anti-fraud solution is as well that detect the true fraud beforehand.

[SPEAKER_02]: Are they using 3DS, father verification, stop the true [SPEAKER_02]: But the main part a few reason codes are claiming it was a me. [SPEAKER_02]: So it was a fraud claim for subscription. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a, you can see duplicate processing in general. [SPEAKER_02]: You could see for subscription, it's canceled goods and services that they already canceled the actual subscription.

[SPEAKER_02]: And they're still being charged. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if you've received item not as described. [SPEAKER_02]: So these are some main ones and each one of those as a completely different set of rules and for each card scheme, there's a different set of rules and for specific areas of the world, there's different sets of rules. [SPEAKER_02]: You need to really be able to break it down and to each scenario of what will help when that case.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I explain, for example, for a fraud case, [SPEAKER_02]: Well, let's take goods and services not as describe things that are very important there are too many times it's a second hand item and the description it explained that there may be scratches on the item so showing the actual description of the item that there may be scratches on something because it's not brand new that would be really important for item not as described that they're claiming the scratches on the item.

[SPEAKER_02]: Her goods or services not received. [SPEAKER_02]: One of the most important things is proof of delivery. [SPEAKER_02]: So we don't ask our merchants for proof of delivery, for example. [SPEAKER_02]: All we need is tracking numbers to work connected behind the scenes with all of the carriers.

[SPEAKER_02]: One of the things that's back in number, we can pull ourselves all of the proof of delivery and all the information on behalf of the merchant. [SPEAKER_01]: So just getting into the nuts and bolts of your product in order for you to be able to offer something that scales well, but you don't lose that win rate percentage. [SPEAKER_01]: Are you tapping into the language models? [SPEAKER_01]: Is that the kind of unlock technologically that's helping you do this more accurately now?

[SPEAKER_01]: I know you mentioned machine learning was how you used to do it. [SPEAKER_01]: Like what's very unique about the way you're doing it at just? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so what's unique about it is our capability to tailor it and even optimize over time. [SPEAKER_02]: So what we call the network effect is because we're not working off of templates and we're working off of these dynamic arguments that allows us to run tests.

[SPEAKER_02]: an AB test different arguments and different scenarios. [SPEAKER_02]: So we're not running an AB test on two different templates for just one specific merchant. [SPEAKER_02]: We have merchants across industries. [SPEAKER_02]: And when we run an AB test on a specific scenario, whatever is learned in that scenario is an input into the core of just.

[SPEAKER_02]: then all merchants that fall into that scenario receive the benefits of that test, to what we learned in that test. [SPEAKER_02]: So all of our merchants on our platform are not only we're hitting higher wind rates for them, but we're constantly improving those wind rates to increase those wind rates over time. [SPEAKER_02]: In addition, you have to have domain expertise in order to have a strong charge-back solution. [SPEAKER_02]: The [SPEAKER_02]: The problem is, is when I first built my first charge back solution, I had myself as a domain expert and one individual that I called my strongest domain expert on the team.

[SPEAKER_02]: Industry rule changes happen, nuanced rule changes twice a year, and major rule changes every few years. [SPEAKER_02]: Every time changes would happen, I'd have to go in or have my domain expert go in and manually update these tens of different templates and then update the whole team about the new rules and regulations. [SPEAKER_02]: What we have today is our domain experts sit on our product team and when changes happen, they can scale those changes, they go into the core of the solution, change a core argument, based off of that new rule, and then all merchants that fall into that new scenario receive those benefits.

[SPEAKER_02]: so the system is improving its scale over time. [SPEAKER_02]: Now what's interesting about what you ask is it was we were at the forefront of technology back in 2020 when we started of taking the chargebacks to the next level with technology which wasn't being done. [SPEAKER_02]: What's cool today with generative AI is it's allowing us to do things that were always part of the vision of just [SPEAKER_02]: But it's allowing us to do it a lot faster than we thought we would, which is very exciting.

[SPEAKER_02]: So many of our tests in our processes were built off of structured data until generative AI. [SPEAKER_02]: And we had to have everything based off of structured data today. [SPEAKER_02]: We're running tests and we're building our evidence with our structured data, which is such a cool stage to get at in the world of technology. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'll give some examples when you lose a charge bath.

[SPEAKER_02]: you don't just get a response that you lost if the PSP can pull it from the system, some PSP's pull and some don't, but if you can pull it from your PSP, you can get the issuers response of why they actually rejected your evidence and it's actually a written out response. [SPEAKER_02]: of unstructured data of why they rejected your evidence. [SPEAKER_02]: Think about millions of cases like that to go and try to read through all these issues or response of why they're rejecting our evidence.

[SPEAKER_02]: Today that's unstructured data that we can organize and actually learn from to figure out where are we falling short. [SPEAKER_02]: Why are we not winning certain cases and actually improve the solution over time? [SPEAKER_02]: In addition, actually in the evidence today, we can analyze customer support communication, and then input that into the core of the evidence when that customer support communication will actually help the case where the system can decide when to actually implement and add customer support communication.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, one of the questions I had is, what are the consequences of the charge backs from both the merchant side and the buyer side? [SPEAKER_00]: I think we could understand that financially, there's a loss on the merchant side, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like a direct loss of the revenue, they were, they thought they had to have to now give back. [SPEAKER_00]: But outside of that is there like a track record where the PSP's keeping that can then put them in harms of not being able to use that platform and then also on the other side on the buyer side, [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, great question.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'll start actually on the financial aspect because there's a lot of times confusion there. [SPEAKER_02]: Chargeback ratios are based off of your revenue, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And how much depends that thing value you have. [SPEAKER_02]: So when you lose a chargeback, [SPEAKER_02]: You're not losing your margin on the transaction.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're losing the entire amount. [SPEAKER_02]: So let's say it's a $100 transaction. [SPEAKER_02]: You're losing the entire $100. [SPEAKER_02]: So if your margin is a low margin, think about if you're making $2 on every $100 or $10 on every $100.

[SPEAKER_02]: Think about how many transactions you have to complete in order to recover the fund from that one charge back that you lost. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's what I always say is, [SPEAKER_02]: Many, most merchants are below 1% in regards to their chargeback ratios, but don't base it off of your revenue, and that's based off of your revenue, based it off of your net income. [SPEAKER_02]: When you do that, your chargeback ratios are many times 5, 10, and in some industries when margins are really low, it's 25% of their net income, and it's a lot more painful financially that sometimes merchants tend to realize it will begin.

[SPEAKER_02]: Once you have the charge backs, it's how do you actually deal with them? [SPEAKER_02]: The actual manual process, do I even recover these funds? [SPEAKER_02]: And do I have a manual team dealing with this? [SPEAKER_02]: Do I have to grow that manual team?

[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes merchants built some automation on top of it. [SPEAKER_02]: Then they have to manage that automation. [SPEAKER_02]: There's one person on the nose on a handle the automation and then they leave the company. [SPEAKER_02]: And [SPEAKER_02]: the rules change of the card schemes and to keep that automation up to date when you're automating templates, you know, get the winner you deserve from start and be it doesn't stay consistent with the new rules and regulations in the market.

[SPEAKER_02]: But on top of that, what you're saying is the limits and that's also a huge piece for merchants is really making sure they [SPEAKER_02]: because they're being monitored by for both their fraud and charge back ratios and the were a lot of changes in 2025 around that. [SPEAKER_02]: The big talk was around BAM. [SPEAKER_02]: Those are visa changes around how they monitor your charge back ratios. [SPEAKER_02]: They used to monitor your charge back ratios.

[SPEAKER_02]: They had the dispute ratio of VDMP and they had your fraud ratios, your VFMP. [SPEAKER_02]: They've combined it [SPEAKER_02]: and there's been a lot of noise around the topic in 2025 and confusion because the rules kept changing, visa kept making new updates on how the ratios are going to be calculated. [SPEAKER_02]: What is considered below the limit alerts, solutions like verified and ethical CDRN and RDR and ethical alerts, how does that affect it, how does order insight affect it?

[SPEAKER_02]: All these alerts systems that can help you. [SPEAKER_02]: And they help you save all the ratios and how has been a big confusion in the market. [SPEAKER_02]: I've done quite a lot of videos and webinars in 25 just to set the level straight. [SPEAKER_02]: I even did a few with these of themselves, but they came on and tried to help explain the confusion that was happening in the market around them.

[SPEAKER_02]: But merchants have to make sure they're below those limits. [SPEAKER_02]: But even if you're below those limits, [SPEAKER_02]: You stop to make sure you're covering those funds. [SPEAKER_02]: Are you deserve your government? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what about on the buyer side? [SPEAKER_00]: Is there any sort of tracking like, hey, that this particular profile has gone through X amount of charge racks that have been known to do this and the duty get blocked? [SPEAKER_00]: Or what's the process on that side? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a great question.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's funny to ask, because as I mentioned, we work with multiple third party enrichment sources that help us get additional information about the card holder and the transaction and we're constantly testing new third party enrichment sources. [SPEAKER_02]: And one of them was, we just spoke to this week about that topic of, because nobody's doing that on the, [SPEAKER_02]: be a short side of what card holders are doing all these charge backs and most issuers only have their own set of their data and to track their own card holders.

[SPEAKER_02]: But they're building it database. [SPEAKER_02]: This company we're talking about that to them is that you can get this data across different issuers and that's something that's challenging for issuers is to detect the problematic card holders. [SPEAKER_02]: But just because you have a problematic card holder, does it mean you're not going to accept them as I give them a credit card? [SPEAKER_02]: Because that's the problem with this friendly fraud first party misuse.

[SPEAKER_02]: When it's true fraud, you block the transaction and you cancel the card. [SPEAKER_02]: When it's the true card holder, let's say they do a hundred transaction, maybe two or three of those transactions are going to be friendly fraud first party misuse. [SPEAKER_02]: Because they're going to three batch transactions. [SPEAKER_02]: It's this given take of, okay, this is a good customer.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're processing a lot of transactions on my provide through the system, but they're also can now committing friendly fraud in the good friendly fraudsters. [SPEAKER_02]: They're not just doing it on one card. [SPEAKER_02]: They have multiple cards across multiple issuers. [SPEAKER_02]: Are they doing a little bit of friendly fraud here?

[SPEAKER_02]: A little bit of friendly fraud here. [SPEAKER_02]: They're there. [SPEAKER_02]: So nobody wants to block them as consumers overall because then that you're going to lose a lot of good transactions in that way. [SPEAKER_00]: Fair enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what you're saying is that there's going to be like a centralized database now that's going to this company is going to take it to account all the different issuers and try to flag profiles that are doing this across multiple platforms. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I was just talking them this week of the information, the data they have across different issuers and being able to collect problematic card holders across different issuers. [SPEAKER_02]: And there's a lot of technology being done on the issuers side to help detect the actual card holders committing the problematic transaction in the first place.

[SPEAKER_01]: But what's your revenue model, Ronan? [SPEAKER_01]: So are you charging like a SaaS business or are you charging like a percentage of the recoveries you're able to get for people? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so we have several business models, but I'll be honest, the majority of merchants like the business model of the success space fee, meaning we only take a percentage of what we actually recovered on behalf of merchants and it's really important. [SPEAKER_02]: The focus on what we've recovered because there's a lot of confusion in the industry around this piece is when you actually submit evidence for a charge bath that representatives, you get the funds back as a merchant.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it's a preliminary credit that doesn't mean those those funds are going to stay with you. [SPEAKER_02]: The stage can go down back to after the representment to a pre arbitration and then you lose the funds again. [SPEAKER_02]: We never call a case in one case until the entire life cycle of a charge back is completed. [SPEAKER_02]: It could usually be up to 120 days and only at that point when we know the funds are back with the merchant.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's for most of the merchants sit on the success space, but there are specific merchants that don't want to wait several months to figure out how that much they're going to have to pay and they want to know each month. [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a per charge back fee or one general platform fee for producing the service on the monthly basis, but the majority are on the success space. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's well aligned with your customers. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about the entrepreneurial journey.

[SPEAKER_01]: So talk to us about founding the business, your co-founder. [SPEAKER_01]: So how many co-founders, what are the different roles? [SPEAKER_01]: Do you guys raise seed money or are you bootstrapping? [SPEAKER_01]: Do you expect a raise in the future?

[SPEAKER_01]: Give us the entrepreneurial side of what you've been doing. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, sure. [SPEAKER_02]: So my partner now building the idea of just we've were building the idea for about two years behind the scenes from 2018 until 2020 designing what we're going to do that's going to be so different in the market really when we come into the market really [SPEAKER_02]: make a big bang in the market of doing something different. [SPEAKER_02]: And while 2020 is when we went all in on the project, we left our full time job.

[SPEAKER_02]: When I was looking for a partner and built this solution with me, I always say to other entrepreneurs that I speak with is know what you're really good at, and know what you've either never done before. [SPEAKER_02]: or things that you haven't been your focus in your career and those are the type of individuals you should be looking for as partners. [SPEAKER_02]: So I found a great partner that had a great tech background. [SPEAKER_02]: I worked with mostly with tech teams myself, but I knew [SPEAKER_02]: The charge back industry well, I knew what could work in this industry well.

[SPEAKER_02]: I knew technology wanted to build. [SPEAKER_02]: I needed a strong partner with a tech background and we partnered together in my partner. [SPEAKER_02]: This was also his second company. [SPEAKER_02]: He sold his last company to Magento and then Magento was purchased by Adobe.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I met him when he was working in Adobe. [SPEAKER_02]: had a few who are original initial customers, and then when COVID had, we thought things were going to turn to for the worse, but it was the exact opposite volumes went through the roof for the merchants that we did. [SPEAKER_02]: They were working with us, and then we had a lot of organic growth. [SPEAKER_02]: Those versions saw we were doing something different, so they introduced us to other merchants and the first payment processors, we integrated with base our doing something different, they started introducing us to their other merchants and we grew organically throughout 2020.

[SPEAKER_02]: And towards the end of 2020 is when we did our first initial seed round of funding and we've grown ever since we actually closed our C round back in the end of 2024 beginning of 2025 we've raised over a hundred million to date and by by really strong investors in the three that know the industry really well. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, CHDFT, Dev Ventures, City Ventures, while I'm many more F2 people know and other strategic investors. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's been really cool to see the growth of the company and that we've really focused on enterprise companies and the thing about enterprise companies is to so important is that when you work with SMBs, [SPEAKER_02]: a lot of them don't even fight their charge next to them.

[SPEAKER_02]: So anything you build them is better than what they have today or they're not very good or they don't know the rules. [SPEAKER_02]: So you can build a pretty basic charge back solution and provide something to some beings. [SPEAKER_02]: Now we want a different route. [SPEAKER_02]: We want the enterprise price route and when you provide a solution to enterprise companies, most of these enterprise companies either have these massive internal teams [SPEAKER_02]: or they have a technology that they build themselves.

[SPEAKER_02]: When a company like us comes around and says that we're going to solve your charge-back solution, we need to show results. [SPEAKER_02]: And we need to show if they're at 60% win rate, how we're going to bring them 70% and 80% and that's why we really focus on building the right methodology and technology and no one else, no other solution in the market ahead. [SPEAKER_02]: and no internal team had built before, which allowed us to grow through the enterprise market.

[SPEAKER_02]: And my large enterprise companies worked with us today. [SPEAKER_02]: I wish I could mention all the names, but for example, some that I mentioned, Best Buy Door Dash, Affirm. [SPEAKER_02]: And many others, the biggest enterprise companies today work with us. [SPEAKER_02]: And many of the largest payment processors today partner with us.

[SPEAKER_02]: For example, World Pay was a partnership I can not openly speak about. [SPEAKER_02]: They provide a charge back solution to all of their merchants today called Defender. [SPEAKER_02]: It's actually the just solution and they checked every solution on the market and realized that the technology methodology of just surpassed anything else on the market. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, phenomenal work.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's very impressive. [SPEAKER_01]: Do you expect to raise more, or do you think you're going to get to Caspa positive off that's your own it's a good question. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a discussion internally at the comments of our next that strategic move around investing and the goal to become cash for positive. [SPEAKER_02]: So with the team size today.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're a little over 100 today globally. [SPEAKER_02]: We have an office in Paloji, in London, and in New York, and most employees work out of one of those offices, but there are several employees in other areas of the world as well. [SPEAKER_02]: We have a few announcer down, a few in other states in the United States. [SPEAKER_02]: So definitely growing, and we have, we're going to be growing a lot in 2026.

[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned a lot throughout this conversation that regulations change often during, you know, if the business trying to do this on their own, it's great if they figure it out today, but it can be changed again in a few months in a few months. [SPEAKER_00]: So what are some of the most recent changes that have been made and what kind of impacts have they had? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a great question because 2025 has been a really interesting year around regulation changes.

[SPEAKER_02]: So when back in April, 25, when these are rolled out, the new rules are on the map and the new ratios that we discussed a few minutes ago, they also rolled out these new rules around the fields. [SPEAKER_02]: And they didn't change the timelines of when you could submit your evidence. [SPEAKER_02]: but they did incentivize merchants and PSPs to handle chargebacks faster. [SPEAKER_02]: So today, it's not only about building the right evidence, but it's building the right evidence fast.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you don't respond in the first 10 day window when a chargeback comes in, you can actually receive additional fees that can go up to even $4 if you wait [SPEAKER_02]: to submit to the later stage. [SPEAKER_02]: And if you don't even submit it all and you want to accept the case, but you just let the time run out, you can get fees up to $7.00. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's really important to handle the cases and the right amount of time because of this.

[SPEAKER_02]: In addition, when a case goes to the next stage, create arbitration, you need to accept those cases, or you can receive a $15 fine for that. [SPEAKER_02]: And [SPEAKER_02]: That specifically bees of a mastercard change their feed process in the past and just dimension bees of that, those specific changes were for the United States and they're talking about making those changes globally as well. [SPEAKER_02]: Mastercard has these really interesting changes that a lot of merchants aren't aware of that was done in the past.

[SPEAKER_02]: For example, they have this [SPEAKER_02]: A case when you fight a representment and it goes to pre arbitration and you accept that stage, that's when you get your $15 fee. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, these bees are passed down to the who choirs in the payment processors, not to the merchants. [SPEAKER_02]: What's interesting is how do those accueirs in payment processors pass them down to those merchants? [SPEAKER_02]: And many times they simplify them in a different way, but they also, [SPEAKER_02]: charge a little bit higher so that they can take their cut the PSPs on top of the car's games.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's their business model. [SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of merchants are not fully aware today is there's usually now this blanket fee that if you fight and you lose the charge back. [SPEAKER_02]: So you rep or you send the case at the Rep Resetman stage and it goes to Pre-Arbitration and you accept it at the Pre-Arbitration stage. [SPEAKER_02]: You many times will get an additional fee from your PSP and we tell our merchants today, check with your PSP.

[SPEAKER_02]: Are you receiving additional fees and understand your fees throughout the chargeback process? [SPEAKER_02]: Because if not, you might be fighting cases you shouldn't be fighting in the first place. [SPEAKER_02]: And we used to tell merchants, your job as a merchant is to build the best evidence that legitimate evidence so that the issuer can make a more educated decision. [SPEAKER_02]: Today we tell merchants, it's not only about building the best evidence in getting the highest win rate, it's also about deciding which case is to fight in the first place.

[SPEAKER_02]: So not only getting the highest win rate, but getting the highest ROI. [SPEAKER_02]: And we've built an actual model that actually looks at past chargebacks at the data at the rules and says, okay, this case has x% chance of winning based off of the data. [SPEAKER_02]: This is the amount of fees that are, [SPEAKER_02]: risk if you lose this case and this is how much this case is worth and then the models will recommend if you should fight or not fight this case and it can do it automatically and it'll build the evidence or accept the case on behalf of a merchant.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's putting more responsibility on merchants now but they don't need to not only need to build the best evidence but they also need to pick the right cases to be building the evidence for. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's a more challenging time for merchants [SPEAKER_00]: So you mentioned AI a few times as well and from what I gather AI is currently used for, you know, reading through 20 page documents and making a decision much faster than human can and kind of the LLM model, where is it going from here?

[SPEAKER_00]: How is AI going to impact your industry going forward? [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, so just to clarify, it's not that's the future vision of where just is going is we actually see that you mentioned reviewing the documents, the issues today are manually reviewing get our vision is that it will actually be a system to systems reviewing the document. [SPEAKER_02]: Today, ours, it's on the merchant side where it's building the evidence and we're building it so that a human on the other side can decide in our favor, the highest chance that they'll decide in our merchant's favor, but our future vision is that it's not going to be humans on the other side and it's going to be systems talking to each other and being part of that technology of system to system decisions on specific cases, but [SPEAKER_02]: On top of that, it's really interesting to see what's happening in regards to agentic commerce.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the agentic commerce really started to happen on the past few months in 2025. [SPEAKER_01]: Is this like, are you referring to like the model context protocol stuff where I can just [SPEAKER_01]: I'll be able to just tell my LLM to buy stuff for me. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_02]: So what's crazy about it, think about it is, I'm not even know the merchant that I purchased from any more.

[SPEAKER_02]: I would go to my agent, let's say it's dpd or any other agent that I would use. [SPEAKER_02]: And they're going to go and they're going to choose the right website to make the purchase from. [SPEAKER_02]: And they'll do the purchasing on the card holders behalf. [SPEAKER_02]: What this is going to do is going to create a lot more challenges in this ecosystem.

[SPEAKER_02]: A, it's going to cause more charge backs in my opinion, because charge backs exploded when we went online because it distanced the card holder from the actual merchant. [SPEAKER_02]: It was harder for a consumer to go into that breaking order store and then go to a charge back on them. [SPEAKER_02]: But when it's online, your distance from the actual merchant. [SPEAKER_02]: Now think about this, you're going to be even further distant as a consumer.

[SPEAKER_02]: from because you're not even going to be see the interface of that actual March that you're going to just be on your agents interface and they'll be more confusion. [SPEAKER_02]: There could be more actual mistakes by the agent themselves and have a little more legitimate charge back as well. [SPEAKER_02]: Who's liable in that scenario? [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of discussion in the industry now.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're going to have a new reason code which is my LLM screwed up and bothered what they think. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and who's liable for that, right? [SPEAKER_02]: The merchant or record, which is now the merchant costs provided in the good or service, the agent. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of discussion who that should be.

[SPEAKER_02]: And right now, there's a challenge for merchant state to detect that it was even an agent making the transaction. [SPEAKER_02]: And be, if it was an agent, you actually need different evidence to deal with that case, showing the end user flow that the consumer went through is not going to help your case because the consumer didn't go through that end user flow. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, what's the actual evidence that you need this going to be most important is that consumer gave that agent the consent to go make that transaction on their BF.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the evidence is even more they're going to the checkout screen is all that the interaction that happens between the consumer and the agent even before that stage. [SPEAKER_02]: So there's going to be a lot more changes in regards to how evidence going to look and how to even detect [SPEAKER_02]: those cases. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's exciting where we sit because being the technology leader in the industry is we're sitting on the forefront of agenda commerce and looking to see how how to actually make sure the evidence is built in the right way.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I always say that [SPEAKER_02]: The card schemes, many times when industry changes happen, car schemes don't right away make rule changes around their charge backs. [SPEAKER_02]: They see the ecosystem interacts and builds evidence. [SPEAKER_02]: And over time, based off of what companies like just are going to do in this industry, that's how these endmaster carters are ultimately going to be building. [SPEAKER_02]: They're rules in the future around the gented comms.

[SPEAKER_01]: So our regulations going to compel the LLMs like the agents to like reveal the chat history with the user to help gold evidence in this case. [SPEAKER_01]: I guess there's too many different agencies. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how you would do that. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly, so there's protocols today, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: That specific merchants can work with. [SPEAKER_02]: And if you're working with that specific protocol, you can aid detect the agent. [SPEAKER_02]: There was on your platform and reject agents you don't want on your platform. [SPEAKER_02]: And then you can pull the right data that is needed.

[SPEAKER_02]: But right now, it's the wild west. [SPEAKER_02]: That's the wild west and exactly what you're saying. [SPEAKER_02]: Can most merchants, like people are saying, all 3% of transactions on our already agentic commerce today. [SPEAKER_02]: We don't really know because we're not a lot of merchants aren't detecting the agent on their website at the moment.

[SPEAKER_02]: So right now we're at this transition stage. [SPEAKER_02]: It's still the wild west and it's going to be interesting to see in 2026. [SPEAKER_02]: where the industry goes, do merchants go down the path of integrating with a proper protocol and are going to be able to reject specific agents and only work with certain agents. [SPEAKER_02]: And those are going to be the leading agents of the market.

[SPEAKER_02]: Or as you can stay this wild west that we're going to have to find other solutions for. [SPEAKER_01]: Incredibly exciting time for your business. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, very exciting. [SPEAKER_00]: All right, and so thank you so much for this chat.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's been actually very exciting. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a little bit different than what we usually talk about, but it's kind of cool. [SPEAKER_00]: Your industry and where it's going, but we usually wrap up these conversations with a future looking question. [SPEAKER_00]: So if you're looking back on your industry ten years from now, what do you hope to have seen happen in the next ten years?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it's a great question because it starts with when my partner and I have feared that and design the IVR gas, we actually look at the entire ecosystem. [SPEAKER_02]: We look at the merchants pain points from disputes and charge banks, we look at the payment processor and acquire and we look at the card schemes and the issuers and we know all their pain points. [SPEAKER_02]: very well. [SPEAKER_02]: We said when we we started the company we have to be very focused when we started this company and we focused our solution on solving the merchants pain point and partnering with the major payment processors to provide a solution to merchants.

[SPEAKER_02]: But our future vision [SPEAKER_02]: is that it can't stay in this way that issuers are manually reviewing evidence with hundreds of individuals. [SPEAKER_02]: The card schemes are manually reviewing when it goes to arbitration. [SPEAKER_02]: Volumes are just increasing. [SPEAKER_02]: I was just at a mastercard conference a few months back.

[SPEAKER_02]: And they were stating the increase in charge that's going to happen in the coming years. [SPEAKER_02]: It's about, believe it was like 24% increase. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's even before agented commerce explodes. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's going to increase even more with agented commerce.

[SPEAKER_02]: This problem is not going away. [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to continue to have great anti-fraud solution stopping true fraud. [SPEAKER_02]: But as I said earlier, you're not going to want to stop even if you know there's a high chance that it might be friendly fraud, you're not going to block the card holder that has a high chance of doing friendly fraud every time because they're not doing friendly fraud on every transaction it's a good card holder. [SPEAKER_02]: So these types of charge racks are going to continue to come through and because of a gentacommer's, they're going to increase, there needs to be more available solution for the entire ecosystem.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we're looking at the issuer side. [SPEAKER_02]: How do we scale and build tech at the right methodology there? [SPEAKER_02]: The card scheme side and this old system that was built back in the 70s is chargeback process that we're constantly trying to update and make new rules [SPEAKER_02]: needs to go down the path of being a technology-based solution that's scalable for all sides because there's a lot of human error being in the ecosystem even today. [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of merchants will still get frustrated.

[SPEAKER_02]: We have all the data. [SPEAKER_02]: We have everything we should win this case. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but there's a human on the other side. [SPEAKER_02]: This reviewing this and [SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes they make mistakes and it's not a fair system and we're looking for a fair system and a more scalable system for the future.

[SPEAKER_01]: So Ronan, you mentioned your current product is submitting these cases for review to the issuer and you mentioned the issuer needs better tech so that they're doing things in a scalable fashion and are you envisioning your company providing that service to the issuer side as well. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we've actually run several successful POCs on the issue or side and it's quite exciting to see, but it's not a product we're selling to the market yet. [SPEAKER_02]: We're very focused on the merchant side.

[SPEAKER_02]: What we call becoming the category king of charge backs for the merchant and payment processor side and run some successful POCs there. [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to be building that out of the future as well. [SPEAKER_01]: Does that create a conflict if you're both on the merchant side and on the issue or side on a particular dispute? [SPEAKER_02]: it's a great question.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's something that we've discussed internally to be honest. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a funny question too because we said, oh, it's always something that we'll need to deal with down the road at some point. [SPEAKER_02]: And when we ran our successful POC, I think it was the second charge back we ever received on the issuer side was for one of our merchants. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's like, wow, this problem is coming to us faster than we thought it was.

[SPEAKER_02]: But that would put us in a different situation if we go down that route, right? [SPEAKER_02]: We're not going to be just defending a merchant and be focused on a merchant or just be defending an issuer. [SPEAKER_02]: What we see are us in that ecosystem is providing a platform for both sides to communicate better with one another. [SPEAKER_02]: So we would be putting ourselves in a different seat in that scenario, has just instead of just as of one sided scenario, we're on the other side.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you build a trusted reputation [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Fascinating stuff. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, that takes us up to the hour.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ronan, thank you so much for your time. [SPEAKER_01]: Late in the evening, over in Israel. [SPEAKER_01]: Fascinating, it's got to be learned to turn today about charged vaccine at a whole space. [SPEAKER_01]: Really, this is all very new to me, so it was quite interesting, and I'm sure that many of the listeners feel the same way.

[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you so much for joining us, and until next time, this was Finchrippener. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.