Chargeback defense team for e-commerce

Texas-based Chargeback Gurus has been a pioneer in the fight against ecommerce chargebacks for more than 14 years. The journey to global defender in this fast-paced Internet-driven market started with a desire to resolve a personal business need. This ultimately led to an Inc. 5000-listed company that over the past five years has fought more than 1.85 million chargebacks and prides itself on having won more than $150 million in revenue for clients.

A self-described serial entrepreneur, Chargeback Gurus CEO Srii Srinivasan has launched several successful business ventures during her career, including a software development firm and call center.

"My first chargebacks were through a client who used our call center services and at that time there was nobody to help," she said. "I took some time off and gathered all the evidence information, and I was able to win every single chargeback," she said, adding that during that time she also launched an online herbal supplements company, which led to building a system that consistently achieved chargeback recovery rates of 80 percent or higher.

Word spread, and clients in similar predicaments with chargebacks requested assistance. The Chargeback Gurus brand became official in 2014. "Our motto is fight, prevent and recover," Srinivasan said. Perhaps not surprising, the first three letters of the firm's newly released proprietary FPR-360 system embody the motto.

Custom fit for merchants

The Chargeback Gurus team developed the propriety technology in FPR-360 as an evolution of its existing chargeback tracker system. FPR-360 integrated with more platforms, including merchant CRM systems and payment gateways so that cross-system data could be combined to more accurately pinpoint weaknesses that might lead to chargebacks, Srinivasan stated, noting that extensive reporting options are built in.

Because not everyone is well versed in chargebacks, the firm asks plenty of questions up front. "We ask them about their challenges, and we take really extensive notes,"

she said. "We analyze the merchant's business scenario, and then we recommend only the services that will be beneficial to that merchant."

The company also provides a no-obligation demo to illustrate how the program works. "We tailor our demo based on their challenges and show them what they will get," Srinivasan said. "Then we tell them about our Guru Guarantee, which is: if they don't see ROI, they're free to walk away from the month-to-month agreement."

Chargeback Gurus' tactical approach is comprehensive. "Our bigger goal is prevention of chargebacks and preservation of merchant accounts," she noted. "We have the biggest chargeback prevention alert network." It sends an alert to the merchant before the dispute hits the merchant account as a chargeback, preventing up to 50 percent of chargebacks, she added.

Another tool is the root-cause analyzer, which scrutinizes more than 100 data points to determine the root cause of each chargeback, and its 3D Secure 2.0 technology protects merchants selling high-ticket items. A global team of chargeback specialists monitors client data and acts swiftly to protect merchant revenue.

Sales partners welcome

"In the last three years, we have experienced tremendous growth in this space, and I still see tremendous potential," Srinivasan said, noting that chargebacks and fraud have become a multibillion dollar problem for ecommerce merchants.

To meet increased demand for its services, Chargeback Gurus is expanding its partnership channel and provides tools for sales partners to manage the value-added program within their merchant portfolios.

"If an ISO were to come on board, we make it really easy for them," she said. "They would get their own login. They can log in any time of day or night to get real-time updates about their merchants, view merchant account risk thresholds online for their merchants, and we also give them recurring revenue based on how much we charge the merchant."

For hard to place high-risk ecommerce merchants, Chargeback Gurus recently launched the Payments Lounge website to connect merchants with suitable payment processors.

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