Bill Gates’ daughter’s shopping app Phia is in damage control mode

Phia, the shopping app co-founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, is now issuing refunds and reversing transactions after admitting it collected commissions on sales it never actually drove. Business Insider reported that the startup is working with affiliate network Impact.com to correct attributions, and a Phia spokesperson confirmed the company has offered transaction reversals to brands. Impact.com said it is reprocessing every action credited to Phia between June 20 and July 29 that had not yet been paid out, reattributing them to the right publisher or refunding advertisers.The cleanup follows a Bloomberg investigation published on July 9 that found Phia's mobile browser extension quietly opening a background tab during checkout and injecting its own referral code, overwriting whoever had actually sent the shopper there. Bloomberg tested the extension across more than 50 retail sites, including Walmart, Nike and Zara.