The Multi-Client Payment Problem
You run a BPO or outsourced contact centre. You handle calls, chat, email — maybe AI agents — for a portfolio of clients. Some of those clients need you to collect payments on their behalf.
Here's where it gets complicated.
Client A processes through Worldpay. Client B uses Stripe. Client C has a Braintree account they negotiated rates on three years ago and aren't switching. Client D is a debt collection agency that's contractually required to use a specific processor mandated by their creditors.
Each client expects their branding on the payment experience. Each client has different compliance requirements. Each client's payments need to settle into their own merchant account.
And your agents — whether human or AI — need to handle all of this from a single interface, without seeing card data, without expanding your PCI scope, and without logging into four different payment dashboards.
This is the multi-client payment problem. It's unique to BPOs and outsourcers, and almost no payment solution is designed for it.
Why Standard Solutions Don't Work
Single-Gateway DTMF Solutions
The incumbent contact centre payment providers — PCI Pal, Eckoh, Sycurio — solve the PCI compliance piece well. They mask DTMF tones so agents can't hear card data. Recordings are clean. The call centre is de-scoped.
But they're built for single-merchant environments. An insurance company with one PSP and one brand. A utility company with a direct Worldpay integration.
When a BPO tries to use these solutions across a multi-client portfolio, the problems multiply:
PSP configuration per client. Most DTMF solutions support a limited set of gateways. Each client's PSP needs separate configuration, often requiring professional services involvement.
No multi-tenant architecture. The solution isn't designed to route Client A's payments through Worldpay and Client B's through Stripe from the same agent session. You end up with separate configurations, separate dashboards, separate reporting.
Per-seat pricing. PCI Pal and Eckoh charge per agent seat. For a BPO running 200 agents across 15 clients, that cost is borne entirely by the BPO — and it doesn't scale down when volume drops. A quiet month costs the same as a peak month.
No white-label. The payment experience carries the DTMF provider's branding, not your client's. For BPOs that position payment collection as a premium capability, that undermines the value proposition.
Logging Into Client Portals
Smaller call answering services often handle payments by logging into each client's Stripe dashboard or payment terminal. An agent takes a call for Client A, alt-tabs to Client A's Stripe account, processes the payment, switches back.
This is operationally fragile at any scale:
Agents need credentials for multiple payment systems
No audit trail linking the call to the transaction
Card data is visible to the agent (full PCI scope)
Training complexity multiplies with every new client
A single mis-keyed transaction goes to the wrong merchant account
Building In-House
Some enterprise BPOs consider building their own payment infrastructure. The scope is sobering: multi-PSP integration (each gateway is 2–4 weeks of engineering plus ongoing maintenance), PCI DSS Level 1 certification ($500K+ in year one), tokenisation vault, multi-tenant merchant management, and a compliance function to maintain it all. The build path makes sense for a payments company. BPOs are not payments companies.
What BPOs Actually Need
Strip it back to requirements:
Multi-PSP routing. Each client's payments route through their own PSP — Worldpay, Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com, or any of the 40+ gateways their merchants might use. One integration from the BPO's side.
Multi-tenant by design. The system knows which client the agent is handling. When a payment is triggered, it automatically routes to the correct PSP with the correct merchant credentials. No agent decision-making. No manual switching.
Zero PCI scope for the BPO. Card data never enters the BPO's environment. DTMF tones are captured within a PCI DSS Level 1 certified boundary. Recordings are clean. Agents hear nothing. The BPO's entire telephony and recording stack stays out of scope.
White-label. The payment experience — whether it's a DTMF prompt during a call or an SMS payment link sent mid-conversation — carries the client's branding. The BPO can position this as their own capability. The end customer sees the brand they trust.
Per-transaction pricing. Cost scales with payment volume, not headcount. Quiet months cost less. Peak months scale without renegotiating seat licences. This aligns the payment infrastructure cost with the revenue it generates.
Multi-channel. Voice (DTMF) for live calls. Payment links via SMS or email for post-call follow-up or when the caller can't use a keypad. Chat payments for digital channels. The same integration covers all of them.
Unified reporting. One dashboard showing payment activity across all clients, with client-level filtering, reconciliation, and refund management. No logging into separate portals.
The Revenue Opportunity
Most BPOs treat payment collection as a cost centre — a compliance headache they tolerate because clients demand it. That framing is wrong.
Payment collection is a premium service. Clients will pay more for a BPO that can securely capture payments during calls, because the alternative is:
Post-call payment links with 30–50% drop-off
Customers calling back to a separate payment line
Failed collections that never convert
When your BPO can capture a payment while the customer is live on the call — with their card in hand, intent confirmed, agent guiding them through — collection rates jump. That's directly measurable value for your clients.
The Numbers
The UK contact centre outsourcing market is worth $5.7 billion, growing to $7.8 billion by 2030. Payment-related calls represent 15–20% of contact centre volume across sectors like utilities, insurance, debt collection, telecoms, and financial services.
For a mid-size BPO handling 50,000 payment calls per month at a $0.20 per-transaction cost:
Monthly infrastructure cost: $10,000
Client charge (passed through + margin): $15,000–$25,000
Net revenue from payment capability: $5,000–$15,000/month
That's $60K–$180K in annual revenue from a capability that also improves client retention, wins new business, and differentiates you from BPOs that can't take payments.
For larger operations, the numbers scale proportionally. A BPO processing 200,000 payment calls monthly is looking at $240K–$720K in annual margin from payment collection alone.
Payments as a Competitive Moat
Once a client's payment flows run through your infrastructure — their PSP configured, their branding applied, their reconciliation integrated — switching BPOs means rebuilding that entire payment setup elsewhere. Payment collection creates operational switching costs that message-taking and appointment-booking services don't.
How It Works in Practice
Agent-Assisted Payments (Human Agents)
Agent is on a call with a customer who needs to pay
Agent clicks "Take Payment" in their interface — the system identifies which client this call belongs to
The payment layer initiates a DTMF capture session, routed to the client's configured PSP
The customer enters their card details via keypad — tones are masked from the agent and the recording
The payment layer processes the transaction through the client's PSP
Agent sees confirmation: "Payment of £150.00 approved — last four digits 4242"
Call continues naturally
If the customer can't use their keypad, the agent sends an SMS payment link with one click. The link is branded to the client. The customer completes payment on their device while the conversation continues.
AI Agent Payments
The same flow works for AI voice agents. When the AI identifies payment intent, it triggers the payment layer via API. DTMF capture happens within the secure boundary. The AI receives a webhook confirming success or failure, and continues the conversation. No human involvement required.
This is particularly relevant for BPOs scaling AI agents for debt collection, appointment payments, and renewal processing — high-volume, repeatable payment scenarios where AI agents handle the full conversation.
Post-Call Payment Links
For calls where payment wasn't completed live — customer needed to check their account, wanted to discuss with a partner, or the call was informational — the agent (human or AI) triggers an SMS or email payment link. The link carries the client's branding, supports cards, digital wallets, and bank transfers, and reports back when payment is received.
PCI DSS v4.0.1: What Changed for BPOs
PCI DSS v4.0.1 (effective March 2025) tightened requirements for outsourced payment collection:
Shared responsibility is now explicit. Merchants (your clients) can't fully transfer PCI liability to you by outsourcing. But they can dramatically reduce their scope by ensuring you use a PCI-certified payment layer that keeps card data out of your environment.
Enhanced monitoring of third-party providers. Your clients are now required to monitor and assess the compliance of their service providers more rigorously. A BPO using pause-and-resume or manual card entry is a compliance liability your clients must actively manage and report on.
Targeted risk analysis required. Every payment handling procedure needs documented risk analysis. A secure payment layer with DTMF isolation and multi-PSP routing is a cleaner compliance story than a patchwork of pause-and-resume policies and manual workarounds.
For BPOs, the v4.0.1 changes mean that clients will increasingly require evidence of PCI-compliant payment infrastructure — not just a policy document saying "we pause the recording." The BPOs that invest in compliant payment infrastructure now will win the clients whose compliance teams are asking these questions.
Comparing Approaches
Pause & Resume | DTMF Overlay (PCI Pal/Eckoh) | Multi-PSP Payment Layer (Shuttle)
PCI scope | Full SAQ-D | SAQ-A | SAQ-A
Multi-PSP | N/A | Limited (1–3 gateways) | 40+ PSPs
Multi-tenant | No | Limited | Built for it
White-label | N/A | Limited | Full
Pricing | N/A | Per-seat ($15–40/agent/mo) | Per-transaction ($0.20)
Channels | Voice only | Voice only | Voice + links + chat
AI agent support | No | Limited | Yes
Implementation | Minimal | Weeks–months | Days–weeks
Best for | Small, single-client centres | Enterprise single-merchant | BPOs, multi-client outsourcers
FAQ
How does the system know which client's PSP to use? When your agent handles a call, your CRM or CTI identifies the client. When payment is triggered, the client's PSP configuration is passed to the payment layer. This is typically automated via your workforce management or routing system — no manual selection required.
What if a client changes their PSP? Configuration change. The client's PSP settings are updated in the payment layer. No re-integration. No downtime. Payments route through the new gateway from that point.
Can we use this for outbound collections? Yes. Outbound calls work the same way — when a customer agrees to pay, the agent triggers payment capture via DTMF or sends a payment link. For AI-driven outbound collections, see our guide on secure payment collection for debt agencies.
What about refunds? Refunds are processed through the same payment layer, routed back through the original PSP. Agents can initiate refunds from the same interface they use for payment capture. Full audit trail included.
How does this affect our existing CCaaS platform? The payment layer integrates via SIP/API with your existing telephony infrastructure — Genesys, Five9, Talkdesk, Twilio Flex, NICE, or others. No platform replacement required. For CCaaS platform operators looking to embed this for their BPO customers, see Embedded Payments for CCaaS.
What's the implementation timeline? Pre-built connectors for major CCaaS platforms: days to a week. Custom SIP integration: one to two weeks with a single developer.
Related Reading
PCI-Compliant Payments for Contact Centres — the complete guide to contact centre payment approaches
PCI Pal Alternatives for BPOs and Contact Centres — detailed comparison of DTMF solutions vs multi-PSP payment layers
Secure Payment Collection for Debt Agencies — PCI-compliant payments for the collections vertical
Why Most Call Answering Services Can't Take Payments — the payment gap in the call answering market
Enterprise PSP Mandates — why enterprise clients demand their own PSP
PSP-Neutral vs Single-PSP — the architectural decision for multi-PSP support
How Platforms Monetise Payments — the revenue model for payment infrastructure
Collect payments for every client, through every PSP, without touching card data.
Shuttle gives BPOs and outsourced contact centres a single integration for multi-client, multi-PSP payment collection — with white-label branding, per-transaction pricing, and PCI DSS Level 1 compliance included. Voice, links, and chat. Live in days.
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