Global Fintech Interview with Shanthi Shanmugam, Co-founder and CEO, Casap

Shanthi Shanmugam, Co-founder and CEO of Casap chats about the fast paced fintech market in this catch-up with Global Fintech Series:

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Hi Shanthi! Take us through your fintech journey so far and role at Casap.

My fintech journey began at Robinhood, where I spent six years scaling the product – everything from adding crypto to redesigning the app and evolving it beyond just a trading utility. This is what really inspired me to start Casap – specifically, launching the 24/7 live support.

When the GameStop event occurred, we lost a lot of trust with our users, and we needed to find an opportunity to rebuild it. I quickly realized the most important thing when building that primary financial relationship is having your customers’ backs when they need you the most. The 24/7 live support was a great step toward this, but what really seals it is being able to resolve issues the first time someone asks.

When someone sees fraud or has a dispute – can you actually get them a resolution immediately? I experienced first-hand why it was so hard to do that. The systems our back-office team were using at the time were very clunky. Though it may seem counterintuitive, the back-office experience is actually the consumer’s experience. With an inefficient, difficult back office, it’s hard to build trust with consumers.

This experience deepened my conviction for helping financial institutions scale trust in the face of growing and ever-evolving fraud. It inspired me to launch Casap, leading efforts as our CEO. Our mission is to transform disputes and fraud issues from a painful, trust-eroding process into one that actually builds loyalty while saving institutions massive amounts of money in efficiency and fraud loss recovery alone.

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What are you most looking forward to with this new funding in terms of Casap’s upcoming innovations and journey?

I’m really excited to continue advancing our AI copilot for disputes and fraud. It gives institutions vital context in real time, helping them make intelligent, data-driven decisions. So far, this has enabled clients to cut their cost per dispute by 90% and lower their fraud losses by half.

In addition to innovation, I’m also looking forward to expanding and bringing this technology to even more banks, credit unions and fintechs. The demand is clear: every organization would like the ability to detect, understand and fight first-party fraud, while modernizing how they operate in the process.

For global organizations, what are some of the most common fraud and areas of dispute resolution that need urgent attention and better automation to solve?

Number one is first-party fraud. We once only thought of fraud as some hacker in a different country stealing information or making purchases. While this does happen, what occurs as much, if not arguably even more, is consumers pretending to have not made legitimate purchases and/or not have received items they actually did. That’s only one example, but generally, first-party or “friendly” fraud are misuses of Reg E and Reg Z, and it’s skyrocketing –  now easily a $100 billion dollar problem and rising.

The second biggest problem is areas bad actors are exploiting to take over an account or make unauthorized transactions. Whether it’s manipulating weak or vulnerable processes or simply tricking accountholders into giving them access to their accounts, we need to focus on how we can best prevent or eliminate these security gaps.

Finally, most overall payment operations at large enterprises tend to be incredibly inefficient, creating a lot of issues and vulnerabilities. Luckily, we are building the next generation of AI agents to help solve these problems.

What about the current state of fintech most interests you?

The industry is at an inflection point. Every fintech, bank and credit union is trying to build that primary relationship with consumers, and they have more tools than ever before to do it. AI is now enabling organizations to provide instant resolution and an amazing consumer experience, while also ensuring they don’t lose money to fraudsters.

But the key to truly succeeding is figuring out who’s who quickly and effectively. Given that everyone is competing for share of wallet and that primary financial relationship, the best way to differentiate in the marketplace is by being the most trusted. And to really create that trust without losing significant money to fraud, institutions need to leverage the right AI solutions.

When it comes to the impact of AI on fraud and dispute resolution, what latest innovations would you like to highlight more about in this conversation?

Rather than being the black box portals many in the industry feared they would be, the latest contextual AI agents are instead allowing institutions to transparently surface the right rules, evidence, and likely outcomes in real time, while ensuring they can take those actions. For combating fraud in particular, this highlights the importance of empowering the right AI with the right context to help institutions work together to understand who bad actors are and who they aren’t, especially with first-party fraud.

How do you feel fintech evolutions will further impact the future of business transactions and associated areas in the next few years?

Institutions, businesses and consumers all want everything to be faster. To meet this demand, fintech is going to evolve to become instant in every aspect of payments. The next logical step is going to be around intelligence, with AI purchasing and executing e-commerce on our behalf.

In turn, we as an industry need to be extremely mindful of how we handle this shift. Does an AI need to identify itself? Does it need to identify that it’s working on the behalf of a particular person or business? Whatever the answer, it must be anchored in trust, especially as payments settle faster, resolution becomes more proactive rather than reactive, and compliance is the default. Consumers shouldn’t need to think twice about whether or not they’re protected. The system itself should have that guarantee of trust.

Five takeaway thoughts you’d leave everyone in fintech with before we wrap up?

First, trust is the most important currency of fintech. Second, it is critical that we empower intelligent decisions versus just automating a bunch of clicks. Third, institutions should never underestimate the negative impact of first-party fraud. Not only is it killing their balance sheets but it’s also torpedoing consumer trust. It also makes it difficult for their teams to do their jobs effectively since they often lack the tools and insights to do so. Fourth, AI is only powerful when it’s paired with access to the right data at the right time with the right expertise. Finally, because it’s so important, I’ll reiterate – trust is the most important currency. Institutions must first build it and then protect it. If they do both well, they will thrive in this new age.

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