Fintech Insider Podcast by 11:FS
00:15:16 · Kate Moody
[00:15:16] S0: Yeah. Yeah, as I think we've alluded to throughout this conversation so far, obviously, it's a new initiative. We're still kind of seeing how it's how it's playing out with multiple different players in the market. So kudos to to the team at Plum for for getting the approval and getting it live and yeah, we'd be excited to keep an eye on this to see how it how it plays out in the customer experience and how customers interact with it as well. Okay. On to our next story, and this has been taken from the papers, and that is Chargebacks911 launches indemnification for AI agent purchases. US based dispute management company, Chargebacks911, has launched a new service designed to protect merchants against qualifying chargebacks arising from purchases made by AI agents on behalf of consumers. As AI agents increasingly search, compare, and purchase products for consumers, questions are emerging around authorization, liability, and who bears the cost when a transaction is disputed. The service uses AI technology, behavioral intelligence, and dispute data to identify agent initiated transactions, assess their risk, and determine which qualify for indemnification. It operates alongside merchants' existing fraud prevention and payment infrastructure without requiring changes to their checkout systems. Brad, I'm obviously gonna come to you first on this one. Congratulations on the launch. Obviously we've touched a little bit on AI already in discussion of Plum's story, and obviously I'm guessing it's a massive focus for you guys as well. Could you maybe talk our listeners through kind of how you've got to this offering, kind of again we'll have a mixture of levels of understanding of of AI and its complexity amongst our base. It'd be good to understand a bit more about you. What made you decide to to introduce this service?
00:16:52 · Brad Wiskirchen
[00:16:52] S4: You know, at Chargebacks911, we have been resolving disputes for a decade and a half initially. It started with credit card transactions, but we evolved rather quickly and far before anyone else to cover all sorts of transactions, be it ACH, be it alternative payments, etcetera. We've always been at the forefront. We're certainly the first to leverage artificial intelligence in in the dispute resolution process. And so trying to always stay one step ahead of of challenges for merchants, Fintechs, and banks alike, we recognize that although it's a very small percentage of overall transactions right now, transactions initiated by AI agents are are the future. It's going to happen more regularly. It's going to happen more aggressively, and it will become ubiquitous. So it behooved us to take the vast amounts of data that we collect and create from the 2,500,000 merchants and banks that we represent globally in basically every country in which we are authorized to do business by the US government and take that data and apply it to artificial intelligence in order to help us with this solution. So effectively, what we're doing now is taking what is nascent but will become huge, and we're providing merchants, banks, and fintechs with certainty so they can engage in digital commerce with with the AI agents. And we're doing that through an indemnification product where whereby they can accept the transactions with certainty and and truly not worry about whether the transaction ultimately ends up in a dispute or not because they've got the certainty that we'll take care of it if it does.
00:18:47 · Kate Moody, Brad Wiskirchen
[00:18:47] S0: Yeah. I'm sure I probably butchered the explanation in our intro. Like, I'm sure there's a huge amount of complexity behind the scenes. I suppose from the perspective of an ordinary consumer, as you say, you know, we're probably expecting the number of consumers using these types of agents to make payments, pay purchases to increase. Like, what is it gonna look like if you're an ordinary consumer using an AI agent? Will will you see this experience, or will... Is this something that just happens completely behind the scenes? How does it work? [00:19:15] S4: The consumer won't see our experience. We're actually more on the merchant side or the service provider side, etcetera. But it's like consumers engaging in a in a transaction leveraging an AI agent, and they certainly know it because they've they've authorized the agent. They've created the agent. They've made it possible for the agent to engage in commerce on their behalf. So it's just when those transactions that are initiated by the consumer's agent end up in a dispute with the penultimate provider of the good or service that we get engaged on behalf of the penultimate provider of the good or service, be it an online retailer, etcetera. So we're there to to help that online retailer or any of their service... Upstream service providers from a payment perspective deal with the inevitable disputes that will arise from this new form of commerce.
00:19:15 · Brad Wiskirchen, Kate Moody
[00:19:15] S4: The consumer won't see our experience. We're actually more on the merchant side or the service provider side, etcetera. But it's like consumers engaging in a in a transaction leveraging an AI agent, and they certainly know it because they've they've authorized the agent. They've created the agent. They've made it possible for the agent to engage in commerce on their behalf. So it's just when those transactions that are initiated by the consumer's agent end up in a dispute with the penultimate provider of the good or service that we get engaged on behalf of the penultimate provider of the good or service, be it an online retailer, etcetera. So we're there to to help that online retailer or any of their service... Upstream service providers from a payment perspective deal with the inevitable disputes that will arise from this new form of commerce. [00:20:12] S0: Matthew, keen to bring bring you in, kinda get your take on this from from what you're seeing. Does this feel like a move in the right direction? Do you think there's a real need for this kind of service?
00:20:21 · Matthew Goldman
[00:20:21] S3: I do think there's a need for it. I mean, we're in such early days of agentic commerce. And I I wrote about this in my newsletter cards for the win this week about what are the use cases people are using it for, and how are they getting access to it? And, what... I think the dispute part is a big big part of it. I think there is... There's some examples from other places where robots are taking over. Right? Like, think about self driving. There's been this conversation when the self driving car gets into an accident, who's at fault? And I think it's a very good analogy here because, like, chargebacks are never as simple as the merchant wins or the user wins. Sometimes the merchant wins and the bank loses, and the user still wins because the bank decides to make the consumer whole. Right? And that's a thing that, like, higher end brands or companies like American Express have long done. And I think the agentic layers are going to have to own some of the risk themselves as well. If I tell an agent to buy me dog food or whatever, and it goes and buys me cat food, that's not the merchant's fault. And it's not my fault. It's the agent's fault. And the merchant certainly shouldn't have to bear that risk. So I think it's very interesting to think about this, you know, the the chain has a new player in it now. It's no longer consumer merchant, consumer agent merchant. How do you tell your agent what it's allowed to do? And if the agent breaks its rules, who's at... You know, who's liable for that versus there will still be regular disputes. I could also order dog food. My agent could order dog food, and the merchant could send me cat food. And now it's the merchant's fault. So I've always been a fan of services like like Brad's because I think disputes are very expensive. And having intelligence layers and indemnifications and kind of the insurance that a regular merchant doesn't wanna deal with this is is a super valuable component. And it's just gonna get more complicated and also move at at lightning speed. I think the most amazing part about injected commerce is never has anything new in payments ever happened so fast, And we're all figuring it out in real time. Yeah.
00:22:25 · Brad Wiskirchen
[00:22:25] S4: And I think that's a great point. And I think having been involved in the payment sector now for two decades in my career, what I've seen time and time again is new tools, new processes are implemented is the merchants end up getting a little skittish, and so they can either deal with it or just cut it off entirely. And by cutting it off entirely, so if I was a merchant and said, no, I'm I'm I'm nervous about it engaging in commerce with a... With AI agents, then my propensity historically has been, I just won't do it. I'll just won't accept those transactions perhaps. What we're doing is providing a way for those merchants to enter competently into transactions in in a new in a new space. So... And we're not just doing it for merchants. I mean, obviously, we have CB nine one one. Chargebacks911 has the sister company, Fi911, which I run. And we provide services to Fintechs, banks, you name it, both on the acquiring side of the equation and the issuing side of the equation. We help them with by automating onboarding processes, risk management, risk maintenance. We provide compliance services, basically everything you need to engage in powers and and we do it so they can provide those services to their merchant customers. It's adjacent sales. It's helping them complete swing. It's helping them provide a holistic solution to their services. So what we're enabling, we're enabling not just merchants to engage in commerce with AgenTic AI, but also these larger players in the fintech and banking spaces to do it as well. And and it's just that security, that confidence that matters. We're... And we recognize that with institutions like that, you have to make the solution stupid simple because they have finite IT resources. So we've done it in a way where it's just a pixel on a checkout page. Super super simple integration. So, yeah, my son used to say that I make... It's safer to to to do business online, and and we're continuing that here, leveraging an extensive portfolio of AI native businesses and and products. So we're excited.