How we handle your data

Chargewood reads order and dispute data to build evidence, and submits responses on your behalf. Here's exactly what that involves, how it's protected, and where we stand on formal certification.

What we access

When you connect a store or processor, we request read-only access to the order, dispute, and account data needed to build evidence: order and delivery records, payment metadata (card BIN/last-4, never the full card number), customer contact and shipping details, device/IP signals captured at checkout, and usage or support-conversation logs relevant to a specific dispute. We request write access only where it's needed to submit a dispute response on your behalf.

Where it's stored

Chargewood's infrastructure runs on DigitalOcean, hosted in the NYC data center region. Data in transit is encrypted with TLS. Data at rest is encrypted at the storage layer.

Who can see it

Access to customer data is limited to the systems and team members who need it to operate the service — building evidence packets, submitting responses, and providing support. We don't sell merchant or customer data, and we don't share it with anyone outside of what's required to run the dispute itself (your payment processor and the relevant card network).

How long we keep it

We retain dispute-related data for as long as your account is active plus the period needed to resolve any open case or comply with a legal request. If you close your account, you can request deletion of your data; we'll remove what we're not otherwise required to retain (e.g. financial records we must keep for tax or dispute-defense purposes).

Reporting a vulnerability

If you find a security issue, email security@chargewood.com with details and we'll respond as quickly as we can. Please don't test against other merchants' live accounts.

Certification status

We're a young company and would rather tell you exactly what we do today than claim a certification we don't have yet. No SOC 2 report exists for Chargewood at this time — we'll publish one when it's complete, and we're happy to walk a security team through our setup directly: security@chargewood.com.

Business customers

A Data Processing Addendum is available on request for merchants who need one for their own compliance process — email hello@chargewood.com.