Zollback Launches AI-Powered Duty Drawback Platform to Help U.S. Businesses Recover Billions in Unclaimed Tariff Refunds

Zollback today launches the first AI-powered duty drawback platform that automates the identification, optimization, and filing of tariff refund claims with U.S. Customs & Border Protection. Zollback's proprietary algorithms recover 15-20% more in import duty refunds than traditional providers - in 10-15 working days instead of 9-12 months - unlocking an estimated $11-15 billion in unclaimed refunds sitting on the table for American manufacturers, retailers, and importers.
SAN FRANCISCO - March 17, 2026 - Zollback, the AI duty drawback platform [https://www.zollback.com/], today officially launches to help U.S. businesses recover up to 99% of import duties they've already paid to the federal government. With $10 million in tariff refunds already processed and revenue tripling in the wake of escalating trade tensions, Zollback is opening access to a $15-billion-per-year opportunity that 80% of eligible businesses never claim.

Duty drawback - a 200-year-old U.S. government program that refunds import tariffs when goods are re-exported, used in manufacturing for export, or destroyed - has long been accessible only to Fortune 500 companies willing to endure a 9-12 month manual filing process. Zollback changes that. Businesses can now run a free drawback eligibility assessment in minutes to find out how much they could recover.

"Companies pay tens of billions of dollars in tariffs every year, and only about 20 percent of that money is actually refunded. The remaining 80% - nearly $15 billion - just sits there unclaimed," said Elena Zhao, Co-founder and CEO of Zollback. "We built Zollback because this is fundamentally a math problem that no one had ever approached algorithmically. Until now."

How Zollback Works

Image: https://www.zollback.com/og.png

Zollback's platform ingests raw, unstructured trade documents - PDFs, invoices, bills of lading, customs declarations, and ERP exports - and uses AI to automatically parse and structure the data. Its proprietary optimization engine then evaluates every possible import-export matching combination under regulatory constraints to calculate the maximum recoverable refund. In-house licensed customs brokers verify every claim before it is electronically filed with U.S. Customs & Border Protection via certified ABI (Automated Broker Interface) software.

The result: refunds that are 15-20% larger than what the industry's leading providers deliver, processed in 10-15 working days instead of the 9-12 month industry standard - a 95% reduction in processing time.

"From my point of view, tariff refunds are actually a very interesting mathematical problem - it's just that no one has ever approached them algorithmically," Zhao added. "Legacy providers use DutyCalc, literally a Windows 98 application that 90% of the industry relies on, and match records line by line in Excel. We compute all possible combinations and select the optimal matches."

A Team Built for This Problem

Zhao's Stanford PhD research focused on combinatorial optimization - the same mathematics that powers Zollback's matching engine. Before founding the company, she served as Head of Trade Analytics at Maersk Digital, leading algorithmic models for customs cost optimization across 130+ countries, and spent three years as a quantitative analyst at U.S. Customs and Border Protection itself, modeling duty collection patterns and drawback claim workflows.

Co-founder and CTO Daniel Park previously served as a Staff Engineer at Palantir, where he built large-scale data integration pipelines for U.S. government agencies - including trade and border security systems processing billions of records. He was also engineering lead at Descartes Systems Group, the global trade compliance software company, where he architected the document processing and customs data platform used by thousands of brokers and freight forwarders. Earlier in his career, Park built real-time financial matching engines at Stripe, reconciling millions of cross-border payment transactions daily.

The two met at a trade compliance technology summit in 2022, where Zhao was presenting her research on algorithmic drawback optimization and Park was demonstrating Descartes' next-generation document processing. Both saw an industry stuck on 20-year-old software - and realized that combining Zhao's optimization algorithms with Park's customs data infrastructure expertise could rebuild duty drawback from scratch.

Why Now

The current tariff environment has made Zollback's launch especially urgent. Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports add 25% on top of baseline duties, meaning companies can pay $35 in duty on every $100 of goods imported. Zollback's China tariffs duty drawback [https://www.zollback.com/uses/china-tariffs-duty-drawback] program is specifically designed to help businesses hit hardest by these surcharges recover what they're owed. IEEPA tariffs, reciprocal tariffs, and escalating trade tensions are compounding the burden further. Yet the vast majority of eligible businesses - particularly small and mid-sized companies with $10M-$500M in revenue - have never filed a drawback claim because no provider would serve them economically.

Zollback's automation lowers the cost-to-serve enough to profitably serve businesses of all sizes for the first time - not just multinationals with billion-dollar supply chains.

"Even though SMEs are eligible for tariff reimbursement, they are often unable to find anyone willing to handle their cases," said Zhao. "We're changing that. If you import and export, you deserve to get your money back - regardless of your company's size."

Who Zollback Serves

The platform supports the full spectrum of businesses involved in international trade. Retailers and distributors [https://www.zollback.com/uses/retailers] doing inventory rebalancing and re-exports across global markets can recover duties on goods they've already paid for. Importers paying millions in tariffs on raw materials and components can claim refunds on goods that are subsequently exported.

Beyond direct claimants, Zollback offers a partner program for freight forwarders and accounting firms to offer drawback as a white-label value-added service - earning revenue share on every successful refund with zero upfront investment or specialized hiring.

The platform handles all major drawback types, including claims on rejected merchandise [https://www.zollback.com/uses/rejected-merchandise] returned to suppliers and destroyed merchandise - a category that many e-commerce companies don't realize qualifies for a full tariff refund.

Traction

Zollback has already processed over $10 million in tariff refunds, crossed $1 million in booking revenue within its first year, and is SOC 2 Type 1 certified. Demand has been so strong that the company has been turning away customers weekly due to capacity constraints.

Performance-Based Pricing - No Upfront Fees

Zollback operates on a fully performance-based pricing model. Businesses pay nothing upfront and only pay a percentage of the refund once cash is deposited into their account - ensuring fully aligned incentives.

To find out if your business qualifies, take Zollback's free drawback eligibility assessment [https://www.zollback.com/drawback-eligibility].

About Zollback

Zollback is the AI-powered duty drawback platform that helps U.S. businesses recover import tariffs they've already paid. Founded by Elena Zhao (Stanford PhD, ex-Maersk Digital, ex-CBP) and Daniel Park (ex-Palantir, ex-Descartes, ex-Stripe), Zollback uses proprietary optimization algorithms and AI document parsing to deliver faster, larger tariff refunds - making duty drawback accessible to businesses of every size. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and is SOC 2 Type 1 certified.

Media Contact
Company Name: Zollback
Contact Person: Elena Zhao
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Website: https://www.zollback.com/

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