Chargebacks911’s Hires Signal Growth as Chargeback Volume Increases

Chargebacks911 is setting the stage for an e-commerce world full of ever-increasing digital payment—and chargebacks, a frequent challenge to management. To help, it is bringing on two payments veterans, one who oversaw merchant acceptance at Apple Pay and another who led merchant services at Bank of America Corp.

Eric Hoffman, formerly director of Apple Pay business development, joins Clearwater, Fla.-based Chargebacks911 as president of Interbank Solutions, while Guy Harris, who retired as head of merchant services at BofA, becomes chairman of the board. Hoffman also joins the board. Hoffman is president of the board of directors for the Electronic Transactions Association, a merchant-services trade association based in Washington, D.C.

Hoffman began his Apple Inc. tenure in 2014, the year Apple Pay launched. Prior to that, he was general manager Roam Data Inc., a mobile point-of-sale company acquired by Ingenico in 2015.

“It was eight-plus great years at Apple,” Hoffman tells Digital Transactions News. “To be part of Apple Pay as a startup and bring it to where Apple Pay is now is a significant achievement.”

Early on, the challenge at Apple Pay was to gain merchant acceptance of a new contactless way to pay at a time when consumers were just beginning to use contactless-enabled credit and debit cards and merchants knew little about the payment method, much less how to enable the technology on their end.

But, as the U.S. card market migrated to the EMV standard, dual-interface cards became more common and merchant point-of-sale terminals were deployed that supported EMV and near-field communication technology, the protocol for contactless payments, though many merchants hadn’t activated it. And, there’s no discounting the power of Apple’s marketing message, along with the card brands, to drive consumer awareness. Now, most payment terminals have contactless enabled and activated, thanks in part to increased use during the pandemic.

With the Apple presence and Apple Pay’s dominance in mobile payments—97% of retailers surveyed in 2021 by FitForCommerce offered Apple Pay—one may wonder why Hoffman moved on.

“At this stage of my career I wanted to try something new and further my career trajectory,” Hoffman says. “At my age and tenure in the industry and involvement in ETA, there have been many opportunities coming my way. It seemed like a no-brainer to join.”

Hoffman, who will begin his role at Chargebacks911 later this month, says the overall growth in e-commerce, coupled with what Chargebacks911 can offer, was persuasive. The company wants to deliver an agnostic dispute-resolution experience that makes the process easier for merchants. Dispute resolution can be cumbersome for merchants, what with multiple requests for documentation, dedicating staff time to the process, and potentially lost revenue if the consumer’s case bears out. As e-commerce grows, there is a corresponding increase in fraud and chargebacks, Hoffman says. “As the world demands more efficiency and less friction, there is a network effect that is triggered in chargeback fraud,” Hoffman says. A recent Chargebacks911 report found that merchants have seen a 19% increase in illegitimate chargebacks so far this year.