ChargeSentry is a Sherman Oaks-based chargeback solution platform that recently launched its automated service under the management of e-commerce veteran Jack Shenon.
ChargeSentry started off years ago as a core technology meant to help New Age Technology, an e-commerce company of Shenon’s, that was dealing with disruptive chargeback issues and disputes.
A chargeback is the payment amount returned to a debit or credit card following a customer’s dispute of a transaction. “Friendly fraud” is the most common type of chargeback and involves customers making a purchase and disputing the charge with their bank anyway.
Shenon initially hired staff to manually respond to chargeback disputes that were costing the company significant money. The staff proved too costly and were only winning 10 to 20 percent of disputes, according to Shenon.
After years of dealing with chargeback disputes and passing up on chargeback services that were too costly to integrate for a small business, Shenon and company decided to build their own system.
“Once we built that system and put it into action, we went from winning about 20 percent of our chargebacks to over 60 percent of our chargebacks,” Shenon said. “We were able to reorganize the staff so they could focus on operational (matters) and help generate more revenue for the business.”
The system eventually led to ChargeSentry’s launch in 2021.
The company is structured to cater to small and medium-sized merchants and is informed by the difficulties New Age Technology ran into trying to find a chargeback service. “These other services were expensive, charging upwards of $1,000 or more a month,” Shenon said. “They required long contracts, which I wasn’t comfortable with, because I didn’t know if the service would work out for me.”
ChargeSentry offers a free package with limited features and full-featured paid packages ranging from $99 to $499 per month depending on the number of chargebacks.
“Launch” and “exposure” are the two words that defined ChargeSentry in 2021, as it built its clientele and made relationships with payment processors to get them to offer ChargeSentry’s services to merchants.
Business development and further network building are the company’s priorities this year. A challenge, according to Shenon, is making small to medium-sized companies more aware of the issues that chargebacks can create and that there is a service such as ChargeSentry that can help them manage it.
Shennon said some businesses do not respond to chargebacks and they accept them as a cost of doing business. “For a small business owner that is grossing $10,000 to $20,000 a month, if they’re getting $1,000 of chargebacks a month, that hurts, and they aren’t doing anything about it.”