Plaintiff and defense, solo practitioners and AmLaw 200, transactional and litigation.
US law firms already live with strict rules on client money. ABA Model Rule 1.15 and your state's variation. Annual trust account compliance certificates. State bar random audits in California, New York, Florida, Texas, and elsewhere. Mishandling client funds is the fastest way to face a disciplinary committee, and your office manager knows the consequences cold.
Then there's PCI DSS — the audit nobody plans for. The first time a paralegal reads a card number aloud during a retainer call, your phone system, your call recording vendor, your matter management platform, and your network are all in scope. Suddenly you're answering 329 SAQ D questions on top of the work you already had.
And a card data breach at a law firm isn't a quiet IT story. It's a notification under 50 state breach laws, a difficult call to your malpractice carrier, and depending on the matter type, a potential client confidentiality issue that goes far beyond the financial loss. Removing card data from the firm entirely is the cleanest fix — and it's faster to implement than most managing partners assume.
Paytia sits between your phone system and your payment gateway. When a client is paying a retainer or settling an invoice, they enter their card on their own keypad while your attorney or paralegal stays on the line. Our DTMF masking replaces the keypad tones with a flat signal in real time — the staff member hears nothing identifiable, the recording stays clean, and the card data goes straight to your gateway (Stripe, Chase Payment Solutions, Authorize.Net, Braintree, LawPay, and others).
Routing is configured at the start of the call. Retainers go to your IOLTA account. Earned fees and operating costs go to your firm operating account. The route is captured in the audit trail alongside the matter number, the attorney, and the timestamp — exactly the record state bar auditors want to see, automatically generated, no spreadsheet to assemble.
Most firms are live within days, not weeks. PCI scope drops from SAQ D to SAQ A. Trust accounting rules stay intact. And the call recording — useful for fee dispute defense — stops being a card data liability the day Paytia turns on.
Collect the retainer on the intake call. The funds route to IOLTA automatically and the engagement letter goes out same day.
Clients call to pay outstanding invoices without reading card numbers to reception. Fees route to your operating account.
Court fees, deposition costs, expert witness retainers — all collected against the matter on a single call.
Tokenized card on file for clients on installment plans. Charges run automatically without monthly chase calls.
SAQ A
Down from SAQ D
IOLTA
Routing on every payment
Zero
Card data in matter records
Days
Live with most firms
Card payments go to the same merchant account you use today — your IOLTA account for client funds, your operating account for earned fees. We don't touch the money. We just take card data out of the capture step. The split between client funds and operating funds is configured at the call level, captured in the audit trail, and the payment lands in the right trust facility automatically. ABA Model Rule 1.15 record-keeping obligations stay intact, and your bar's annual trust account compliance certificate isn't affected.
Yes. The most common workflow we see at US firms is intake — the prospect calls, the attorney or paralegal handles the conversation, and the retainer is collected before the call ends. The client keys their card on their own keypad while your team stays on the line. The retainer routes to your IOLTA account, the audit trail captures the matter reference, and the engagement letter goes out immediately afterwards.
Every payment logs the date, time, attorney or staff member who initiated it, matter number, client name, route (IOLTA vs. operating), amount, gateway response, and outcome. That gives your trust accountant or office manager a per-matter ledger they can pull without trawling call recordings. State bar random trust audits — California, New York, Florida, Texas — all want to see exactly that, and you've got it without manual reconstruction.
Yes. Paytia runs in a browser tab alongside whatever practice management system your firm uses — Clio, MyCase, PracticePanther, Smokeball, Rocket Matter, or NetDocuments. Matter references, client IDs, and trust account routing are captured at payment time and posted back into the matter record so your accounts team isn't re-keying anything.
Privileged calls and card data don't mix — anything in the recording is part of your file. Paytia masks the DTMF tones before they hit the recording, so calls record continuously and completely (useful for retention and disputes) and card data never enters the audio. The recording stays usable as evidence without becoming a PCI liability or a client confidentiality risk.
See Paytia on a retainer call flow that looks like yours. Most firms are live within a week.
Trusted by US law firms, insurers, healthcare organizations and regulated businesses that can't afford to get compliance wrong. Learn more about Paytia