Replicant builds autonomous AI agents for contact centres. Their platform handles the Tier 1 support calls that make up the bulk of inbound volume without a human agent: account lookups, status checks, appointment scheduling, FAQ resolution. For contact centres processing thousands of calls a day, Replicant eliminates the staffing bottleneck for routine interactions.
But routine interactions often end with a payment. A customer confirms their outstanding balance and wants to settle it. A caller verifies their account details and asks to update their payment. A service request is completed and payment is due.
Replicant's AI agents can handle everything up to and after the payment. The payment itself, capturing a card number, processing it through a gateway, returning a result, requires infrastructure that sits outside the conversational AI stack entirely. The AI model must never see, hear, or process cardholder data. That's a PCI DSS requirement, not a product limitation.
Shuttle provides the PCI-compliant payment layer that lets Replicant agents capture payments during a call without any cardholder data entering Replicant's platform. There is no native Replicant integration: instead, your application invokes Shuttle's Twilio-based secure capture, and the card is captured through Twilio Pay and passed to Shuttle, not Replicant. This does require you to be a Twilio customer today.
The Payment Challenge for Replicant
Replicant's value proposition is automation. Every call their AI handles is a call that doesn't need a human agent. But if a call requires a payment and the AI can't process it, the call gets transferred, and the automation benefit is lost.
The challenge is structural:
Card data is toxic to AI infrastructure. The moment a customer enters card digits via their keypad, those DTMF tones carry cardholder data. If they enter Replicant's audio pipeline, Replicant's entire infrastructure is in PCI scope: the speech recognition engine, the AI model, call recordings, transcription logs, data storage, and every network path those systems use.
PCI certification is expensive and slow. Level 1 PCI DSS certification for a complex AI voice infrastructure is expensive to achieve and to maintain every year. It requires quarterly vulnerability scans, annual penetration testing, a Qualified Security Assessor, and ongoing compliance management. For a company whose core product is conversational AI, that's a massive diversion of engineering and security resources.
Human handoffs defeat the purpose. If the AI agent has to transfer the caller to a human agent or a separate IVR system every time there's a payment, the automation promise breaks down. The customer waits on hold. The human agent handles a simple card capture. The cost savings evaporate.
The solution is a secure payment handoff that captures card data in a completely isolated PCI-compliant environment and returns the result to your application, so card data never reaches Replicant.
How Shuttle Works with Replicant Today
There is no native Replicant integration. Instead, the handoff is API-driven and built on Shuttle's Twilio-based capture, with a clean boundary where cardholder data never reaches Replicant. You must be a Twilio customer, and your application code triggers the handoff at the point of payment.
Here's the architecture:
Replicant manages the conversation. The AI agent handles the call: intent recognition, customer verification, amount confirmation, and conversational flow. All of this is standard Replicant functionality.
A secure PCI capture is triggered for payment: When payment is needed, your application invokes Shuttle's secure capture. Today this runs over Twilio Pay, with Shuttle as the certified gateway connector.
The card is captured: the customer enters their card on their keypad during that secure PCI capture. The digits are captured through Twilio Pay and passed to Shuttle's PCI DSS Level 1 environment, so they never reach Replicant or the AI model.
Payment is processed: Shuttle passes the card data to the merchant's payment gateway, which issues the token. Your payment gateway authorises the payment.
Result flows back. Shuttle returns the transaction outcome to your application via webhook: success or failure, a transaction reference, and a masked card number. The AI agent uses this to confirm the payment conversationally.
One honest caveat to set expectations: the secure capture at the point of payment is live now. Shuttle handles the payment segment of the call, not the whole conversation. Returning the caller to the same Replicant agent after payment works today: you program the return route in your Twilio flow and pass a conversation ID, so the agent picks the call back up with full context. Shuttle works with Twilio today, and any carrier coming soon. You also need some technical resource: Shuttle provides ready-made interfaces for payment links plus the capture and APIs, and you build the agent-side wiring.
How It Works: Step by Step
Here's the flow during a live Replicant call:
Step 1: Payment intent detected. The Replicant agent identifies that the customer wants to pay. This could be triggered by the customer's request, a workflow condition, or a backend lookup showing an outstanding balance.
Step 2: Amount confirmed. The agent confirms: "Your outstanding balance is $156.00. Would you like to pay that now?" The customer says yes.
Step 3: Payment explained. The agent sets expectations: "I'll just need your card details. You'll be prompted to enter them using your phone keypad."
Step 4: Shuttle session created. Your application calls Shuttle's API with the payment amount, currency, and the merchant's gateway configuration. Shuttle returns a session token and signals readiness.
Step 5: Secure capture begins. At the point of payment, a secure PCI DSS Level 1 capture takes over the card collection (today, via Twilio Pay). Shuttle plays secure prompts: "Please enter your 16-digit card number followed by the hash key." The customer enters digits via their keypad.
Step 6: Card captured in isolation. Twilio Pay captures the keypad digits and passes them to Shuttle's PCI DSS Level 1 environment. The card never reaches Replicant or the AI model, so call recordings never contain card data.
Step 7: Card processed. Shuttle passes the card to the merchant's gateway for authorisation, and the gateway issues the token.
Step 8: Result returned. Shuttle sends the outcome to your application. The AI agent confirms: "Your payment of $156.00 has been processed. Your confirmation number is TXN-5518. Is there anything else I can help with?"
The customer stays on the line throughout the capture, with no transfer to a human agent. Returning the caller to the same Replicant agent and call after payment works today: your Twilio flow routes the call back and passes a conversation ID, so the agent resumes with context. Shuttle provides the secure capture and the result webhook; the return leg is wiring your team owns.
Multi-PSP Support
Replicant serves contact centres across industries: healthcare, financial services, insurance, utilities, telecoms. Each of those industries has established payment gateway relationships. A healthcare billing centre might process through Stripe. An insurance company might use Worldpay. A utility provider might route through Adyen.
Shuttle connects to 30+ payment gateways including Stripe, Adyen, Worldpay, Checkout.com, and others. Switching gateway is configuration, not re-integration, though saved cards stay with the gateway that stored them. Each Replicant deployment can be configured with the appropriate gateway for that merchant. A few gateways (Braintree, for example) do not work for voice capture because they will not allow raw card data to be passed, but they do work for payment links.
Routing capabilities include:
Per-merchant configuration: Each contact centre using Replicant can connect to their own PSP
Multi-PSP routing: Each payment method can go to its own gateway, for example cards through one gateway and ACH through another
Manual failover: If a gateway is down, you can move the affected payment types to another connected gateway. There is no automatic failover, and saved cards stay with the gateway that stored them, so repeat payments on stored cards will not run through the second one
No integration multiplication: One Shuttle integration covers every supported gateway, regardless of how many different PSPs Replicant's customers use
This is particularly important for Replicant's enterprise customers, who often have multi-PSP strategies for redundancy and cost optimisation.
PCI Compliance
The integration architecture keeps cardholder data out of Replicant's and its customers' environments, which is what limits their PCI scope.
What Replicant handles:
Conversation flow, intent detection, customer authentication
Payment amount confirmation and session initiation via API
Transaction result handling (success/failure, reference, masked card number)
This is all non-sensitive data. It doesn't expand PCI scope.
What Shuttle handles:
Secure card capture after the handoff, through Twilio Pay
Tokenisation with your gateway
Communication with your gateway, which authorises the payment
Secure prompt playback during card entry
None of it touches your application or the AI platform.
Call recordings are clean. Because the card is entered during the secure PCI capture, the digits are never part of the audio Replicant processes or records. No cardholder data is stored in Replicant's infrastructure, or in the contact centre's infrastructure.
SAQ-A eligibility. Because card data never enters Replicant's systems, the contact centres using Replicant can typically self-assess under SAQ-A for payment processing. This is the simplest PCI compliance tier.
Shuttle is a PCI DSS Level 1 certified Service Provider. That limits your PCI scope.
Beyond Voice: Payment Links
Payment links are the turnkey path. During a Replicant call, your application can send a payment link via SMS or email, including mid-call, as an alternative to keypad entry.
The flow: the agent confirms the payment amount, then tells the customer "I've sent a secure payment link to your mobile number." Shuttle generates a hosted checkout page and delivers it via SMS. The customer opens the link, enters their card details on a secure page, and completes the payment. The result is returned to your application in real time. Links work even with gateways that do not support voice capture.
Payment links are useful when:
The customer prefers visual confirmation of the amount and merchant
Higher-value transactions where customers want to see what they're paying
The caller has difficulty with keypad entry (accessibility, unfamiliarity)
The contact centre wants to offer the customer a choice of payment method
Both the secure capture and payment links use the same Shuttle infrastructure, the same PCI-compliant environment, and the same gateway routing. Your application can offer either option based on the conversation context.
FAQ
Does Shuttle have a native Replicant integration? No. There is no native Replicant integration today. The handoff is API-driven: your application invokes Shuttle's Twilio-based secure capture at the point of payment.
Does this require Twilio? Yes, today. The secure capture currently runs over Twilio Pay, so you must be a Twilio customer. Shuttle works with Twilio today, and any carrier coming soon.
Can Replicant agents take payments without a secure handoff? Not compliantly. If card data enters Replicant's audio pipeline, the entire platform is in PCI scope. Shuttle's secure capture keeps card data isolated so Replicant's infrastructure stays clean.
Does this work with Replicant's existing call flows? Yes. The Shuttle handoff is triggered at the point in the conversation where payment is needed. It's an additional step in the workflow, wired up by your application code. You build the agent-side orchestration; Shuttle provides the capture, payment links, and APIs.
What if the customer's card is declined? Shuttle returns the decline reason to your application. The AI agent can offer to retry with a different card, send a payment link as an alternative, or handle the situation according to the contact centre's configured workflow.
How many payment gateways does Shuttle support? Shuttle connects to 30+ gateways including Stripe, Adyen, Worldpay, Checkout.com, and others. Switching gateway is configuration, not re-integration, though saved cards stay with the gateway that stored them. A few gateways (Braintree, for example) work for payment links but not for voice capture.
What does Shuttle charge? Voice costs $49 per live instance per month, plus from $0.20 per transaction, falling with volume, billed through your Twilio account, with no per-seat licensing. See pricing.
Related Reading
How AI Voice Agents Take PCI-Compliant Payments: The technical architecture for secure payment capture during AI voice calls
What Are Voice Payments? The Complete Guide: IVR, agent-assisted, and AI voice payment models compared
Twilio Pay Connectors: How Shuttle connects to Twilio's payment infrastructure
The Payment Layer for AI Agents: Why AI agents need a dedicated payment layer
Contact Centre Payments: PCI-compliant payment capture for contact centres
Add Payments to Your Replicant Agents
Shuttle is a PCI DSS Level 1 certified Service Provider. If you're deploying Replicant AI agents and need PCI-compliant payment capture, talk to us about Voice Checkout or see how it works for platforms.