Sierra, the AI customer service startup led by Bret Taylor, has teamed up with Stripe so its AI agents can take payments in the middle of a phone call. Sierra announced the partnership on Tuesday.
Until now, customers often had to be transferred to another system or sent a payment link when it was time to pay. Under the new setup, the agent switches into a secure mode. The caller types a card number on the phone keypad, and those details go straight to Stripe. The agent then confirms the payment and continues the conversation.
The agent never sees the card details. It only receives the payment status and the last four digits of the card, Sierra said when it first added payments in April.
Healthcare billing firm Cedar was one of the first companies to use the feature. Patients who call with questions about a medical bill can now pay on the spot. When patients start a payment with Cedar's agent, 71.3% of those calls end in a successful payment, Sierra said.
"A patient can call confused about a charge and leave the conversation with clarity and a resolved balance, in the same call," said Dugan Winkie, Cedar's chief strategy officer.
Sierra is also now listed in the Stripe App Marketplace. Any business that uses Stripe can connect a Sierra agent without custom development work.
The two companies are also working together on the Personal Agent Protocol, an open standard that Sierra and Meta announced earlier this month. Partners include Instinct, a company that raised $1 billion for an agent that phones businesses. Sierra said the standard will also cover how agents pay on someone's behalf.
Stripe has been investing heavily in payments made by AI agents. Co-founder John Collison has said agentic commerce will completely change online shopping. Other startups, including Natural, have raised money to build rival payment tools for agents.
Sierra was valued at $15.8 billion in May, after raising $950 million.
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