Intro: Broadcasting live from Fintech South 2025 at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Now. Here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here broadcasting live from Fintech South 2025. So excited to be talking to my next guest, Shanthi Shanmugam with Casap.

Shanthi Shanmugam: Hi, Lee. Thanks for having me here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Casap. How are you serving folks?

Shanthi Shanmugam: Yeah. So Casap, I started the company a couple of years ago. We help banks transform disputes, card disputes from something that sucks to something that actually keeps their customers happy.

Lee Kantor: Wow. How do you how were you able to flip the script like that?

Shanthi Shanmugam: Well, I mean, think about it. If you see a transaction on your account that wasn’t you, you’d be pretty upset. Then you go to your bank and you say, please help me out. Please give me my money back. That’s what you’re here for.

Lee Kantor: They’re known for their high level of customer service.

Shanthi Shanmugam: Exactly, exactly. You get it, you get it. So it’s really about. I mean, you don’t really expect them to make it easy to get your money back, but what if they gave you your money back immediately because they knew you were telling the truth?

Lee Kantor: Hey, I would.

Shanthi Shanmugam: Help them do that. We helped them do that.

Lee Kantor: So how do you help them do that?

Shanthi Shanmugam: Well, so let’s say let’s take that situation. Let’s say you’re looking at your account. You see a $2,000 TV from Best Buy. That wasn’t you wasn’t your family. It was no one. You know you. Instead of having to drive to a branch or call someone during business hours, you can go right in your app. You can pick that transaction. You say, that wasn’t me at that point. Csat we use AI to figure out based on your history. Do you tend to buy TVs at Best Buy?

Lee Kantor: Do you o’clock in the morning at 2:00 in the morning?

Shanthi Shanmugam: Exactly that. That. Well, look at all that stuff. We’ll ask you a set of questions that the best fraud investigator would ask you. And at the end of asking these questions in the app, we will have a win score. So we’re going to figure out do we think Lee’s telling the truth or not? And even if you are telling the truth, can we actually get the money back from BestBuy? Will they cough it up because we know how to win chargebacks against Best Buy. So based on all of this data, we’ll have this win score. Let’s say it’s like an 80% chance we’re going to get your money back. We will immediately give you that money. The moment you submit your dispute and close out your case. And if we can give it to you immediately, we’ll give you a status tracker. Think of it like the Domino’s Pizza tracker. You order a pizza, tells you when you have toppings on your pizza. We’ll do the same thing with your dispute. Make sure you always know what’s going on.

Lee Kantor: So how are banking institutions embracing this new technology?

Shanthi Shanmugam: You know they love it. And I’ll tell you why. I’ll tell you why. They do care about the customer experience, which is great. What they also really care about is the bottom line. Today, most banks have to outsource their disputes to someone there. It could be a processor.

Lee Kantor: So they’re not doing it. They didn’t say, hey, maybe we should solve this problem.

Shanthi Shanmugam: Some of them have tried and some of them have tried. No, don’t get me wrong, a lot of them have tried. It’s hard because you got regulations, you got Régie and regs that tell banks, if you’re not 1,000% sure that Lee is lying of right now, I made you a fraudster. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. So if we’re not a thousand, you know, is innocent until proven guilty for not 1,000% sure Lee is lying. And you can’t figure that out in the first ten business days, you got to give him his money back. So with all the volume. Because now there’s TikToks and YouTubes telling everyone, hey, did you know if you’re slightly inconvenienced by someone, instead of talking to the merchant about it, you can just use your bank like a concierge and get them to handle the refund. So now the disputes volume is increasing 100% year over year, and the banks are getting overwhelmed. And then they have this rule that says, hey, if you don’t figure it out in ten days, give the money back. So they’re losing a lot of money, $100 billion to first party fraud. So it’s not a hacker out in a different country stealing your information on the dark web. It’s actually your neighbor, your friendly next door neighbor that’s buying a TV, having a little buyer’s remorse and pretending they didn’t. And that’s the kind of fraud that’s really eating away at banks today. So when they embrace us, they say, cool, you’re going to make your customers happy and keep them longer because you’re going to help us show up in these moments that matter, gonna help us cut fraud in half. That’s what we do. We cut fraud losses by 51% for our institutions, and we’re going to keep them compliant and enable their teams to be five times more productive than they are today, because we’re a one stop shop for everything about disputes.

Lee Kantor: So who is your client? Is it the mega bank? Is it the community bank? Like all.

Shanthi Shanmugam: Of the.

Lee Kantor: Above? Well, it sounds like every bank could use you. But who are the ones that are actually, you know, paying to use you?

Shanthi Shanmugam: Yeah, so. But we don’t give it away for free, so all of our customers are paying us. But. Yes. Well, well, we’ve got banks that are in the top 25. We’ve got community financial institutions. We’ve also got public fintechs. So, Emily, you didn’t ask me how I got into disputes, but I did not come out of the womb wanting to solve disputes. So this.

Lee Kantor: Was.

Shanthi Shanmugam: A.

Lee Kantor: Childhood dream.

Shanthi Shanmugam: It was not. It was not. I did not think. Mom, dad. One day, one day, one a silly card dispute.

Lee Kantor: Solving this problem.

Shanthi Shanmugam: Right before I become president. Um, no, no, no, I was I was the second product hire at Robinhood. Um, and I had honestly, I spent a lot of time doing a lot of things there. I added crypto to the app, I helped redesign the app, but the most important thing was after that whole GameStop thing, if you guys remember that.

Lee Kantor: Yes.

Shanthi Shanmugam: I had to figure out how to rebuild trust. And that’s when I started thinking about these moments that matter. And then my co-founder had this kind of parallel life at chime fixing disputes. And then we looked at each other and we realized we spent three years building something that was comically the same, so decided to make it a company.

Lee Kantor: And then were you based?

Shanthi Shanmugam: We’re based in New York.

Lee Kantor: And then why are you here? Fintech. So.

Shanthi Shanmugam: Well, you know, transaction alley, if you heard that phrase, I’ve.

Lee Kantor: Heard.

Shanthi Shanmugam: It 20 times today. No. But actually, though I think it’s such a beautiful, beautiful community here, everyone know and everyone, all these processors all together. And honestly, this is especially when fighting fraud. We’ve got to work together. The fraudsters are hanging out, they’ve got a little group chat going on, like we got a collaborated places like this and help each other out. So that’s that’s why I’m here. I spoke a little bit earlier today and now I’m speaking with you.

Lee Kantor: So what is your take on the Atlanta ecosystem?

Shanthi Shanmugam: It’s warm. It’s fuzzy. It’s. No, I’m getting to learn it a bit better. But I think what’s what’s really amazing is that when it comes to financial infrastructure, how are money? When I bought my bagel at the airport today that was running on infrastructure created by the institutions here, and whether I bought my bagel here or in London or in India, where my family’s from, it’s actually running on this infrastructure. So I to answer your question, I think this ecosystem is beautiful and I’m excited to be a part of it.

Lee Kantor: So how do you see you and your firm kind of leaning into the Atlanta fintech ecosystem? In addition to Fintech South, obviously this great event, but also tagging Technology Association of Georgia, D.C. and the opportunities there for your company to benefit from that community.

Shanthi Shanmugam: I definitely do, and I think the best way to benefit from a community is to give to it. So I, I mean, when when I saw the Fintech Academy and all of these young professionals looking to figure out how to make their mark on this amazing ecosystem. I would love to share some of the insights I’ve learned the last two years. Building something that’s pretty, you know, touching, pretty critical fabric of of our infrastructure. And then the second thing is, I’d love to work with a lot of these companies, I think, I mean, I have the benefit of getting to build case up the same week ChatGPT came out. We’ve got to have a fundamentally different set of first principles that’s enabled us to do things in a very different way. And sometimes I think we’re it’s better working together than trying to rebuild what everything’s doing in separate companies like my co-founder and I were doing for a bit.

Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Shanthi Shanmugam: Honestly, visibility with the right, with the right folks. Like, we’ve got some really amazing folks in Atlanta. We’ve got canned decent, right? You know, digital banking and like how customers are interacting with their banks. We’ve got processors such as, you know, Fiserv and FIS with some presence here. And now visa is opening up, uh, some presence here. But just, I think awareness around how important it is to show up in moments that matter, and how disputes is, is exactly one of those moments.

Lee Kantor: Moments that matter.

Shanthi Shanmugam: Moments that matter.

Lee Kantor: And, um, I can’t wait to see more and more banks embracing that, that line of thought.

Shanthi Shanmugam: Yes. Me too. I mean, why are you laughing? Me?

Lee Kantor: I’ve been to the bank before. You have? Oh.

Shanthi Shanmugam: I’m so sorry.

Lee Kantor: We’ll rebuild that trust. We’ll get.

Shanthi Shanmugam: You back.

Lee Kantor: Well, um, if somebody wants to learn more and connect with you and learn more about KSAT, what is the best way to do that?

Shanthi Shanmugam: Yes. Well, find me on LinkedIn. I talk a lot about first party fraud stories, some of them not so safe for work, but we see a lot come through when customers are saying they didn’t do something, they totally did. So yes, definitely find me on LinkedIn. Shanthi Shanmugam. My name is a little hard to spell so you could also email me Shanti sh a and t h i@ksat.com.

Lee Kantor: And can you spell KSAT?

Shanthi Shanmugam: Yes, I can see ASAP see ASAP.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. And then before we wrap, is there a story you can share with maybe, uh, don’t name the company, but maybe a company you work with that illustrates how effective your system is at, um, you know, solving this problem and creating more moments of manner.

Shanthi Shanmugam: Absolutely. I will give you two really quick ones. All right. So we have we have a customer who who started seeing a very large volume of disputes. There was a TikTok video floating around saying, hey, did you know if you go to this customer, the bank will not be named and file a dispute under 45 bucks? They’re just going to give you your money back. You got all these 44.99 transactions. And in there there are a few. Um, there are a few folks that really needed their dispute resolved quickly. It was this it was this really innocent customer who saw it. It was actually that’s why I came up with the TD example, a $2,000 Best Buy TV on his debit card, and he had rent due at the end of the month and he was freaking out. There was no money left, so our platform one enabled them to figure out all the people that were abusing this policy and make sure that we were closing out invalid dispute cases and enabling the team to handle cases five times faster than they were doing before. And because of our win score, we realized we were going to help. Let’s call him Timmy. We were going to help Timmy pay rent at the end of the month, whereas if we if they didn’t have case up by the time they got around to Timmy’s case, his rent would have been due and who knows what his landlord would have done. So that’s that’s the way we’re really showing up in a moment that matters. And then on the other side, not just these folks that are saying, oh, file something less than 45 bucks, you’ll get your money back. We’ve got folks that are really abusing disputes. We saw a family fraud subscription ring. Let me describe it to you.

Lee Kantor: Family. It’s a family business.

Shanthi Shanmugam: Family business, a first party fraud. It’s. Imagine. Jane Smith reports a dispute for John Smith at the same house for a magazine subscription that she didn’t get. Then John Smith does one for Rhonda Smith, and Rhonda Smith does one for James Smith. So now in each dispute is worth 300 bucks. So that’s like $900 of disputes that they’re just winning before this institution had case up every month. It’s free money. It’s free money that’s going to the customer. And that’s honestly coming out of all of our wallets at the end of the day, because these are fraud losses that we’re paying for in fees and all of that. So KSAT was able to figure out this family fraud subscription. Ring had this home address in common. We’re able to deny all of these cases.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Well, the impact is real. And congratulations on all the success in the momentum. That sounds like you have a great solution.

Shanthi Shanmugam: Appreciate it. Thank you so much for.

Lee Kantor: Having me one more time on the website. Before we.

Shanthi Shanmugam: Wrap. Yes ksat hq.com see ASAP HQ and you could find some time with me and I’ll give you a demo of the product and show you how we cut fraud in half.

Lee Kantor: All right. Well, Chauncey, thank you so much for sharing your story, doing such important work. And we appreciate you.

Shanthi Shanmugam: Thank you. Appreciate you, thank you. Lee.