Secure Pay Capture for voice and chat agents

The core idea of tokenised, out-of-band capture with only a paid/declined result going back to the agent is already sold by Paytia, PCI Pal, Shuttle, Telnyx and the open-source Airlock. Each is tied to one platform: Paytia and PCI Pal are contact-centre and SIP oriented and mostly UK-based, Shuttle and Telnyx only work on their own phone networks, and Airlock only works with ElevenLabs. Collections AI platforms (Sei, Skit, Prodigal and others) already market Reg F and FDCPA guardrails and payment plans. What remains open: (1) one developer SDK that works across Vapi, Retell, ElevenLabs, Twilio, Telnyx and chat, and returns the caller to the same agent cleanly after payment (Shuttle leaves this step to the customer); (2) a ready-made PCI write-up for the merchant's assessor, plus HIPAA coverage for medical billing; (3) bank (ACH) payments as a first-class option; (4) payments tied to collections workflows, such as payment plans recorded in collections software and tracking whether promises to pay are kept. Incumbents could add these quickly, so the best chance is to be the payment layer underneath collections AI vendors, not to compete with them.

• Paytia – Conversational & AI Payments (Capture Assist API)

  Launched July 2026. The AI agent calls Paytia at the payment step, card entry happens while the AI is paused, and the bot gets back a token and a result. Voice over SIP (in front of the bot or joined into the call when needed); chat through payment links. PCI DSS Level 1. Almost exactly the PayBridge pitch.

• Airlock (open source, LiftedHoldings)

  'PCI-safe keypad card and eCheck payments for ElevenLabs Agents: card data never reaches the model, the transcripts, or your servers.' Uses a Basis Theory tokenising vault on ElevenLabs' custom-LLM connection. Nearly the same tagline as this opportunity, but ElevenLabs only.

• PCI Pal

  Established contact-centre payment company. Integrates with PolyAI and Converse 360 through one API; masks keypad tones and takes spoken digits. Reportedly launched an AI-agent payments (MCP) server in Sept 2026 (not confirmed on PCI Pal's site).

• Shuttle (Twilio Pay connector)

  Twilio-based payment connector at $0.20 per transaction, with guides for Retell, Vapi and debt collection. Its guides say returning the caller to the AI agent after payment is still left to the customer.

• Telnyx Voice Payments

  Beta. Mid-call card capture built into the phone network, keeping card data out of the human or AI agent, recordings and transcripts. Only works on Telnyx.

• Twilio Pay / ConversationRelay

  Twilio's built-in <Pay> keypad capture, plus a reported (April 2026, aggregator source) PCI extension to its AI voice product with a list of approved speech vendors. Not confirmed in Twilio's own docs.

• Sycurio (formerly Semafone)

  Established keypad-tone masking and PCI scope-reduction vendor for contact centres. No specific AI-agent integration found.

• Sierra / Replicant (agent platforms with built-in payments)

  Enterprise AI agent platforms that offer billing and payment flows with PCI-compliant capture as part of their own product.

• Sei, Skit.ai, Prodigal, Twig, Simba Voice, Domu (collections voice AI)

  Collections-specific AI voice platforms. Marketing claims cover FDCPA/Reg F guardrails, payment plans and promise-to-pay conversion; these overlap with the Promise-to-pay Agent Kit.