As cloud communications reshape the contact centre, taking payments securely has quietly become one of the channel’s hardest problems to solve. Konekt’s new partnership with Key IVR is built to solve it – and to open a high-margin, recurring-revenue line for partners in the process.
The payment problem hiding in plain sight
Every time a customer reads their card number to an agent, every time those digits land in a call recording, every time payment data passes through an internal system, the organization taking that payment moves squarely into PCI scope. With it comes the audit burden, the cost, and the very real financial and reputational risk of a breach.
For years, businesses managed this with workarounds: pausing call recordings, retraining agents, bolting on virtual terminals. But the ground has shifted. Communications have moved to the cloud – Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Cisco Webex now carry the conversations that used to run on the PBX. Contact centre agents work from home as often as in the office, widening the compliance perimeter with every remote login. And the rules themselves have tightened: the latest PCI-DSS v4.0.1 standard raises the bar for how card data must be handled, monitored, and protected.
The result is a problem that sits awkwardly between two worlds. It looks like a payments problem, but it lives inside the communications stack. And that is exactly where the channel – the resellers, MSPs and service providers who now run those cloud environments – is best placed to solve it. Until recently, most simply haven’t had the right tool in their hands.
A platform built to take card data off the table
This is the gap Key IVR fills. A PCI-DSS Level 1-certified omnichannel payment platform trusted by leading brands worldwide, Key IVR is built on a deceptively simple principle: card data should never enter the customer’s environment at all. Not masked, not paused – removed from the equation entirely. Businesses accept secure payments via phone, online, SMS, and web chat from a single compliant platform that is available 24/7, in 14 languages, and integrated with more than 150 systems. More than £2bn flows through it every year.
The platform spans three core solution sets. Automated IVR payments handle transactions around the clock with no agent required. Agent Assist keeps a human on the call throughout, using DTMF suppression to mask the card tones so the agent hears nothing and the customer notices nothing – yet the payment is fully de-scoped. Digital payments reach customers wherever they are, through branded Click-to-Pay links across SMS, email, WhatsApp and web chat, or a fully branded online portal. Crucially, Key IVR is supplier-agnostic: there is no rip-and-replace of a customer’s telephony or merchant services to make it work.
The outcomes land where it matters commercially. Organizations take their contact centers out of PCI scope, cut the cost of payment-only calls by automating them, and lift conversion through payment journeys that customers actually trust and complete.
Why Konekt – and why now
For Konekt, Key IVR is a deliberate addition, not an opportunistic one. Since rebranding from Nuvias UC and sharpening its focus on cloud communications software and services, the distributor has pursued a clear strategy: selectively expand its vendor portfolio with high-value capabilities that complement the platforms its partners already sell. Secure payments fit that brief precisely.
They also reflect a deeper shift. As contact centres migrate to Teams, Zoom and Webex, voice and payments are converging – and Key IVR pairs naturally with Konekt’s own Konektor managed cloud telephony platform. Together, the two let partners bring voice and payments into a single, joined-up proposition and open a new, recurring-revenue conversation across a customer base they already own.
Joel Chimoindes, CEO of Konekt, sees the partnership as exactly the kind of move the business was rebuilt to make:
“Our partners are increasingly being asked to deliver secure payments inside the cloud communications environments they already manage – and until now, that’s been a gap. Key IVR closes it. Adding a PCI-DSS Level 1 payment platform to our ecosystem is exactly the kind of selective, high-value expansion our strategy is built around: it pairs naturally with our Konektor managed voice platform across Teams, Zoom and Webex, and it gives partners a secure, recurring-revenue proposition to take to their customers. And as with every Konekt vendor, partners don’t just get the technology – they get our technical depth and services wrapped around it, so they can position, sell and deliver it with confidence. We’re energized to get to work with the Key IVR team and help our partners win more, deliver faster and grow sustainably.” — Joel Chimoindes, CEO, Konekt
The timing is no accident. With PCI-DSS v4.0.1 raising the compliance bar, remote and hybrid working expanding the surface area of risk, and partners under pressure to grow beyond thin license margins, secure payments have moved from a niche conversation to a mainstream one – across virtually every sector that takes a card over the phone.
What Key IVR sees in Konekt
Partnerships, of course, run both ways. For Key IVR, Konekt offers more than a route to more resellers. Konekt’s four-stage service model – Discovery, Implementation, Maintenance and Adoption – and its accredited engineering team mean Key IVR solutions are scoped, deployed and supported to a consistently high standard, under each partner’s own brand. In a market where a poorly deployed payment integration can undermine trust in the whole proposition, delivery quality is a differentiator in itself.
It also gives Key IVR access to a curated network of resellers, MSPs and service providers across the UK, DACH, Benelux and France – at a moment when demand for PCI de-scoping and secure omnichannel payments is accelerating across the region.
For Darren Wooding, CEO of Key IVR, the fit comes down to a shared standard:
“We’re delighted to welcome Konekt as a new distributor partner for Key IVR. As we continue to expand the reach of our solutions across the channel, it’s important that we work with organisations that share our commitment to delivering exceptional service, technical expertise and value to customers. Konekt has built a strong reputation within the industry, and we’re excited about the opportunities this partnership will create. We look forward to working closely with the Konekt team to support their partners and drive mutual growth in the months and years ahead.”— Darren Wooding, CEO, Key IVR
What it means for partners
For Konekt partners, the practical opportunity is immediate. They can position Key IVR with full sales and pre-sales support, deal registration and distributor margin built in – wrapped in the discovery, implementation and managed services that turn a compliant platform into a complete, sellable solution. And because Konekt serves as the technical engine for the partner, the relationship stays exactly where it should be: with the partner. You’re the face. We’re the engine.
Paired with Konektor, the proposition becomes genuinely distinctive – managed voice and secure payments, sold and delivered together, across Teams, Zoom and Webex. For partners looking to grow their share of wallet within their existing accounts, this conversation doesn’t require winning a single new logo.
A bigger shift for the channel
Step back, and the partnership says something about where the channel is heading. The most successful partners are moving from reselling licenses to selling outcomes – and payments are quietly becoming part of a complete cloud communications proposition rather than a separate, siloed purchase. The businesses that recognize this first will be the ones their customers turn to when the next compliance deadline, or the next out-of-hours payment gap, comes around.
For Konekt and Key IVR, that shared conviction is the real foundation of the partnership. And for partners, the message is refreshingly simple: the next growth conversation might not be about voice at all. It might be about getting paid – securely.
Konekt partners can explore the Key IVR proposition now at www.konekt.tech.
