AI Agents Credit: Canva Sierra, the AI customer service startup led by Bret Taylor, has partnered with Stripe so its agents can take card payments during phone calls. Customers type their card number on the keypad and the data goes straight to Stripe. Healthcare billing firm Cedar is an early user. Sierra, the AI customer service startup led by Bret Taylor, has teamed up with Stripe so its AI agents can take payments during 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. With the new setup, the agent switches into a secure mode, and the caller types their card number on the keypad. The details go straight to Stripe, and the agent then confirms the payment and carries on the call.
The agent itself never sees the card details, only the payment status and the last four digits, Sierra said when it first added payments in April. Healthcare billing firm Cedar was one of the first to use the feature. Patients who call with questions about a medical bill can now pay in the same call. 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 now also listed in the Stripe App Marketplace, so any business using Stripe can connect its agent without custom work. The two firms are also working together on the Personal Agent Protocol, an open standard Sierra and Meta announced this month. Partners include Instinct, which raised $1B for an agent that phones businesses. Sierra said the standard will also cover how agents pay on someone’s behalf.
Stripe has been betting heavily on payments by AI agents. Co-founder John Collison has said agentic commerce will completely change online shopping, and startups such as Natural have raised money to build rival payment tools for agents. Sierra was valued at $15.8B in May, after raising $950M. Get the TNW newsletter ✕ Close Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
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