IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response, a technology that enables automated telephone systems to interact with callers through pre-recorded voice prompts and DTMF keypad inputs (and increasingly, through speech recognition). When you call a business and hear “Press 1 for sales, press 2 for support,” you are interacting with an IVR system. These systems route calls, collect information, authenticate callers, and in many cases resolve enquiries entirely without involving a human agent. IVR has been a cornerstone of contact centre operations for decades, handling everything from account balance enquiries to appointment scheduling.
In the context of payments, IVR systems serve as a channel for collecting payment card details over the telephone without requiring a live agent. A caller navigating an IVR can be prompted to enter their card number, expiry date, and CVV using their phone’s keypad, and the system processes the payment automatically. This self-service payment model is widely used by utility companies, government agencies, healthcare providers, and subscription services — any organisation that needs to collect payments at scale over the phone while minimising agent involvement and labour costs.
However, IVR payment systems introduce significant PCI compliance considerations. If the IVR environment stores, processes, or transmits cardholder data, the entire telephony infrastructure — servers, network components, and call recording systems — falls within PCI scope. The security requirements for PCI compliance in a telephony environment are substantial, and many organisations struggle to maintain them. This is why modern IVR payment solutions increasingly rely on techniques like DTMF masking and secure handoff to external payment processors to keep cardholder data out of the organisation’s own infrastructure.
Shuttle Global’s Voice Checkout can operate in both agent-assisted and IVR-driven payment flows. In an IVR scenario, the caller is routed to Shuttle’s secure payment environment where they enter their card details via DTMF. Shuttle captures the data within its PCI DSS Level 1 certified infrastructure, processes the payment through the optimal PSP, and returns the result to the IVR system — all without cardholder data ever touching the platform’s telephony environment. For platforms that need both automated and agent-assisted payment collection, Shuttle provides a single integration that covers both modes, eliminating the need to maintain separate PCI-compliant IVR infrastructure alongside agent-facing payment tools.