How Clinical Partners keeps card data off patient calls with Paytia

The challenge

When a parent rings Clinical Partners to book an assessment for their child, or someone calls for support with their own mental health, paying by phone should be the simplest part of the conversation. Clinical Partners is a UK mental health care provider based at Wimpole Street in London, with around 200 staff providing assessments, therapy and ongoing care for patients and their families. Most calls involve sensitive, personal conversations. Patients and family members often ring at a difficult time, and the coordinators who take those calls are trained to handle it. But when it came to payment, the practice had the same problem most businesses share: agents were on the line while card details were given over the phone, putting that data into the Clinical Partners environment. For a mental health provider, the stakes feel higher than average. A patient reading their card number aloud to a coordinator introduces a layer of exposure that sits uncomfortably alongside the confidentiality those calls depend on — and it means card data could end up in call recordings, logs or compliance audits the practice then has to manage. Clinical Partners needed a better way to take payment on both inbound calls from patients and outbound calls where a coordinator follows up, without disrupting the Natterbox telephony and Stripe gateway already in place.

The solution

Clinical Partners started with three agent seats on Paytia's Essentials plan, connected to their existing Natterbox telephony and Stripe gateway. Paytia sits in front of Stripe without replacing it. When it's time to pay, the patient keys their card number on their own phone keypad. The coordinator stays on the line — the conversation doesn't break — but with DTMF masking, the card digits are never audible and never enter the Clinical Partners environment. The payment settles through Stripe, just as before. The same process works whether the call is inbound (a patient ringing in) or outbound (a coordinator following up to take a balance payment). The Natterbox setup is unchanged in either case.

The results

Card data is no longer on Clinical Partners' phone channel. Patients key their own details while staying in conversation with their coordinator, and the card number doesn't pass through the practice's systems at any point. Paytia's Level 1 PCI DSS Attestation of Compliance covers the phone payment process for both inbound and outbound calls. The Natterbox telephony and Stripe gateway are both unchanged.

Key benefits

• Patients key their own card number during the call — no reading aloud to a coordinator
• Covers both inbound and outbound calls with the same secure process
• Card data never enters the Clinical Partners environment in any form
• Paytia sits in front of their existing Stripe gateway — payments still settle through Stripe
• Compatible with their Natterbox telephony — no change to the phone setup
• Paytia's Level 1 PCI DSS Attestation of Compliance covers the phone channel
• Started with three seats on Paytia's Essentials plan