Choosing the right payment solution affects how your business collects revenue, manages risk, and connects payments to the rest of your operations.
Key IVR is, as the name suggests, primarily an IVR and DTMF-based telephone payment solution. With a DTMF model, the customer enters their card details on their telephone keypad and those tones travel across the voice channel, so the payment stays tied to your telephony environment and depends on masking and suppression controls to keep card data out of reach.
SOTpay takes a different approach. Sensitive card details are entered by the customer into a secure browser-based payment environment, so they never enter the telephone channel in the first place.
The key difference is not simply how a payment is initiated. It is where and how sensitive payment information is captured.
Key IVR is commonly used by businesses that:
SOTpay is designed for businesses that:
*SOTpay's fraud-related chargeback protection is subject to the applicable terms, eligibility criteria and exclusions.
Both platforms take payments over the phone. They do it in fundamentally different ways, and that difference determines where your card data ends up.
In a DTMF-based journey, the customer keys their card number into their phone. Those keypad tones travel across the voice channel, and the provider applies masking or suppression so the agent cannot hear or record them.
The card data is still moving through your telephony environment. Your security and compliance position therefore depends on that masking infrastructure and on the controls wrapped around it holding up.
SOTpay does not put card details into the telephone channel at all.
The agent stays on the line while the customer enters their details into a secure browser-based payment page on their own device. The conversation continues, but the sensitive data takes an entirely separate route.
Nothing to mask, because nothing sensitive entered the call.
Because the payment happens in a browser rather than in a phone call, the same secure journey works across:
A DTMF solution is built for the phone. Take it out of the contact centre and it has nowhere to go.
SOTpay sends secure payment links across multiple channels, letting customers complete payment on their own device in their own time.
That removes the rigidity of a structured IVR journey, where the customer has to stay on the line and follow prompts to the end.
Explore Pay-by-Link Solutions.
SOTpay is designed to reduce the scope of PCI compliance by keeping sensitive card data out of your business environment altogether, rather than containing it once it is already there.
This helps:
SOTpay integrates directly with Xero and QuickBooks, so payments are automatically matched to invoices and financial records.
Contact centre payment providers typically connect to accounting systems indirectly, if at all.
SOTpay offers protection against qualifying fraud-related chargebacks, subject to the applicable terms and eligibility criteria.
With a DTMF-based solution, chargeback exposure generally depends on your own arrangements with your provider and acquirer.
IVR and DTMF platforms are built around one channel, the telephone. That shapes what they can and cannot do.
They tend to fit businesses where:
They run out of road when a business needs:
Key IVR is primarily an IVR and telephone payment technology. SOTpay is a secure, browser-based, multi-channel payment platform.
With a traditional DTMF model, the payment journey stays tied to the telephone infrastructure, and so does the card data.
With SOTpay, sensitive card information is entered through a secure browser-based payment environment, giving merchants the same secure journey across telephone, SMS, email, chat, social, web and Open Banking.
If your payments happen anywhere other than a phone call, a platform built around the telephone will limit you.
Explore SOTpay's full range of Payment Solutions.
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