Avaya Does Not Have Native PCI-Compliant Payment Capture
Avaya has been the backbone of enterprise contact centres for decades. Avaya Aura, Avaya OneCloud CCaaS, and the Communication Manager platform handle millions of calls daily across some of the largest contact centre operations in the world.
But Avaya was built for call management, not payment processing. There is no built-in mechanism to securely capture card details during a live call without exposing your agents, recordings, and infrastructure to PCI scope.
This is a particularly acute problem for Avaya customers because many operate in heavily regulated industries — financial services, insurance, utilities, government — where PCI compliance is not optional and audit scrutiny is intense.
The Payment Gap in Avaya
Avaya environments range from fully on-premises Aura deployments to hybrid architectures mixing on-prem and cloud, to the newer Avaya Cloud Office and OneCloud CCaaS platforms. The payment gap exists across all of them.
No DTMF isolation in the call flow. Avaya can route calls, queue them, record them, and provide IVR menus — but when a customer enters card digits via keypad during a call, those DTMF tones are audible to the agent and captured in the call recording. There is no native mechanism to strip tones from the audio stream while keeping the agent connected.
Recording infrastructure captures everything. Avaya's call recording — whether through Avaya Workforce Engagement or third-party recorders like Verint or NICE — records the full audio stream by default. Pause-and-resume recording is technically possible, but it relies on agents remembering to pause at the right moment and resume after. In practice, compliance teams consistently find gaps: agents who forget, who pause late, or who resume too early. And even with pause-and-resume, the agent still hears the card number.
Legacy infrastructure complicates integration. Many Avaya deployments run on older infrastructure — Session Border Controllers, Avaya Media Servers, proprietary SIP implementations. Adding a new payment integration to this stack is not trivial. It requires understanding the specific Avaya architecture in place, which varies significantly between deployments.
Migration uncertainty. Avaya's corporate restructuring has left many customers evaluating migration paths. Some are moving to Avaya's cloud offerings. Others are migrating to Genesys, Five9, or Amazon Connect. In either case, investing in a deeply coupled, Avaya-specific payment integration carries risk. You need a payment layer that works with Avaya today and travels with you to whatever platform comes next.
How to Add Payments to Avaya
Shuttle integrates with Avaya contact centres regardless of deployment model — on-premises, hybrid, or cloud. The integration approach depends on your infrastructure.
SIP Trunk Integration (On-Premises / Hybrid)
For on-premises Avaya Aura and Communication Manager deployments, Shuttle integrates via SIP trunk. When a payment moment is reached, the call audio is routed through Shuttle's PCI-certified environment. DTMF tones from the customer's card entry are captured and stripped from the audio stream before it reaches your Avaya infrastructure.
No changes to your Avaya session manager, media server, or recording platform are required. The integration sits at the network layer, not the application layer.
Twilio Integration (Cloud / Hybrid)
If your Avaya deployment uses Twilio as a SIP carrier — increasingly common in hybrid architectures — Shuttle integrates directly with Twilio Programmable Voice. As Twilio's official payment partner, Shuttle provides a native integration path that adds payment capture without modifying your Avaya configuration.
Payment Links via SMS
For situations where DTMF capture is not suitable — the customer is on a mobile and cannot easily switch to keypad, or the call flow does not support mid-call payment — the agent triggers a payment link sent via SMS. The customer completes payment on a hosted checkout page while the agent optionally waits on the line.
Agent-Assist UI
Shuttle provides an agent-facing interface that can be launched alongside Avaya's agent desktop. The agent initiates payment, monitors the transaction in real time, and receives confirmation — without ever seeing or handling card data.
How It Works
Call is handled normally. The customer calls in, is routed through Avaya, and speaks with an agent. The conversation proceeds as usual — account queries, service requests, issue resolution.
Payment is needed. The agent identifies that payment is required — a bill, a premium, a balance, a booking. The agent clicks the payment button in the Shuttle interface.
Customer is prompted. The customer hears a prompt asking them to enter their card details via keypad. The prompt is configurable — you control the wording and branding.
DTMF is captured securely. As the customer enters their card number, expiry, and CVV via keypad, Shuttle captures the tones within its PCI DSS Level 1 certified environment. The tones are stripped from the audio — the agent hears silence or a masking tone. The call recording captures nothing.
Transaction is processed. Shuttle routes the payment to the appropriate PSP — Stripe, Adyen, Worldpay, Checkout.com, or any of 16+ supported gateways. Routing is configured by merchant, region, or failover rules.
Agent sees the result. The transaction result (approved, declined, error) appears in the agent interface in real time. A tokenised reference is available for CRM logging.
Call continues. The agent confirms payment to the customer and continues the conversation. No transfers, no call-backs, no dropped interactions.
Multi-PSP Support
Avaya is disproportionately deployed in large enterprises and regulated industries — organisations that typically have existing, long-standing PSP relationships. Migrating to a new payment gateway is rarely an option.
Shuttle supports 40+ PSPs and allows routing rules to be configured per merchant, per region, or per business unit. This is critical for Avaya environments that serve multiple brands or divisions.
Typical routing configurations for Avaya deployments:
UK operations route to Worldpay, European operations to Adyen
Different business divisions use different PSPs based on existing contracts
Failover routing — if the primary gateway returns errors, transactions automatically route to a backup
Card scheme routing — Amex transactions processed through a different gateway than Visa/Mastercard
No PSP migration required. Your existing payment relationships stay intact.
PCI Compliance
Shuttle is a PCI DSS Level 1 certified Service Provider.
For Avaya contact centres, this changes the compliance picture fundamentally:
Without Shuttle: Card data passes through your Avaya infrastructure — telephony, recording, agent desktops, and network. Your entire environment is in PCI scope. You face SAQ-D (300+ requirements), annual QSA audits, penetration testing, and significant ongoing compliance costs. For on-premises Avaya deployments with complex infrastructure, this is particularly burdensome.
With Shuttle: Card data never enters your Avaya environment. DTMF tones are stripped before reaching your infrastructure. Recordings contain no card data. Agents never hear card numbers. Your PCI scope drops to SAQ-A — the lightest level, with minimal requirements.
This is especially important for Avaya customers in regulated industries where compliance audits are frequent and thorough. SAQ-A versus SAQ-D is typically a six-figure annual cost difference.
Shuttle charges $0.20 per transaction with no setup fees.
Use Cases
Financial Services
Banks and building societies running Avaya handle card payments for loan repayments, account top-ups, and service fees. PCI compliance in financial services is subject to FCA oversight, and regulators increasingly scrutinise how card data is handled in contact centres. Shuttle removes the risk entirely.
Insurance
Insurance companies are among Avaya's largest customer base. Premium collection, policy renewals, and claims payments happen over the phone daily. Shuttle allows agents to collect payments mid-call without breaking the conversation or creating PCI exposure — critical for maintaining retention during renewal calls.
Utilities
Utility companies processing bill payments through Avaya contact centres need high-volume, reliable payment capture. Shuttle handles automated IVR payments for self-service callers and agent-assisted payments for more complex interactions — all through the same integration.
Government and Public Sector
Local councils, NHS trusts, and government agencies running Avaya can add secure payment collection for council tax, parking fines, prescription charges, and service fees. Shuttle's SAQ-A compliance model simplifies the procurement and audit process significantly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Shuttle work with on-premises Avaya deployments?
Yes. Shuttle integrates with on-premises Avaya Aura and Communication Manager via SIP trunk. No hardware changes or software upgrades to your Avaya infrastructure are required.
What if we are migrating away from Avaya?
Shuttle is platform-agnostic. If you are migrating from Avaya to Genesys, Five9, Amazon Connect, or another CCaaS platform, your Shuttle payment integration moves with you. The payment layer is independent of your telephony platform.
How does Shuttle handle Avaya's call recording?
DTMF tones are stripped from the audio stream before they reach your Avaya infrastructure. This means your recording platform — whether Avaya Workforce Engagement, Verint, NICE, or another solution — captures the full call except the card data. No pause-and-resume configuration is needed.
Can Shuttle work alongside our existing pause-and-resume setup?
Yes. If you currently use pause-and-resume for compliance, Shuttle replaces it with a more robust solution. The transition is non-disruptive — you can run both approaches in parallel during migration.
What is the cost?
$0.20 per transaction. No setup fees, no per-seat fees, no monthly minimums.
Related Reading
PCI-Compliant Payments for Contact Centres — the complete guide to secure contact centre payments
Twilio Pay Connectors — how Shuttle integrates with Twilio's payment infrastructure
Voice Payments — the definitive guide to taking payments over voice channels
AI Voice Agent PCI Payments — adding payment capture to AI-powered voice agents
PCI Pal Alternatives — how Shuttle compares to legacy contact centre payment providers
Voice Checkout — Shuttle's voice payment product
Get Started
Adding PCI-compliant payments to Avaya does not require replacing your telephony infrastructure or embarking on a PCI audit. Shuttle provides a payment layer that works with your existing Avaya deployment — on-prem, hybrid, or cloud — and your existing PSP relationships.
Talk to our team about adding secure payment capture to your Avaya contact centre, or explore Voice Checkout to see how it works.