How do IVR Payments Work?
IVR Payment systems empower customers to make payments by phone 24/7/365 by interacting with an automated interactive phone system. Merchants can offer their customers multiple ways to connect to their IVR Payment system including:
- Customers can directly dial the IVR Payment system’s telephone number (merchants can publish a phone number for this on invoices, account statements or their web site)
- Customers can be transferred to the IVR Payment system’s telephone number by the merchant’s staff
- Customers can connect to the IVR Payment system by selecting a menu option in the merchant’s phone system. For example:
To make a payment, Press 1
Once the customer is connected to the IVR Payment system, the process for making a one-time payment would typically work like this:
- The customer is greeted by the IVR Payment application and is then prompted to enter a
customer number
to identify themselves for the merchant.
- Optionally at this point, the IVR Payment application may have been configured to
look-up
this customer number
with the merchant and present an account balance to the caller. The data exchange for this look-up
is typically done in one of two ways 1) In real-time, using an API integration, or 2) By using an automated daily batch file exchange by SFTP.
- The customer is then prompted to either pay the presented amount or to enter another amount for payment using their phone key-pad.
- Optionally at this point, the customer may be prompted to select a payment method, if the merchant has chosen to offer multiple payment methods such as credit card, debit card or ACH eCheck.
- The customer is then prompted to enter their payment method information, such as their credit card number, expiry date and CVV.
- The IVR Payment application now securely transmits the customer’s payment information to the merchant’s payment gateway for processing. The payment gateway replies to the IVR Payment system with the transaction results. Communications between the Payment IVR and the Payment Gateway are facilitated by an integration using the Gateway’s own API specifications.
- The customer is now notified of their completed transaction results and is prompted to select from a menu of options (For example - make another payment, transfer to a live agent, receive a text receipt, etc.) or they can simply hang up.
- Optionally at this point, the transaction results can be posted in real-time to the merchant’s business systems (CRM, ERP or billing platform), or the merchant can reconcile their business records either by using an automated daily batch file exchange or by downloading a transaction report online from the Payment IVR’ s report portal
There are many variations on the above payment process that merchants can choose for how their customers will use their IVR Payment service. Some of these options include:
- offering multi-language service,
- offering a variety of payment methods such as credit card, debit card and ACH eCheck,
- storing and updating a payment method for use with future payments,
- charging convenience or service fees,
- presenting account balances,
- routing payments to multiple merchant accounts.
