10 Best Voice AI Agent Platforms for Banking and IVR Replacement (2026)

TL;DR

• Plivo: best for banks and fintechs that want the AI voice agent and the phone network from one provider, because Plivo runs the agent layer on its own carrier network, lets the bank choose every model, and publishes its rates: $0.0415/min all-in for a US outbound call.
• interface.ai: best for credit unions and community banks replacing a legacy IVR, because Securityplus Federal Credit Union reports more than 84% of calls automated after the switch.
• Glia: best for banks and credit unions that want voice and digital service on one platform at a fixed price, because Busey Bank replaced its 1-800 IVR with Glia and reports 61% of calls automated.
• PolyAI: best for large retail banks that want a vendor-built voice agent in front of an existing contact center, because it publishes a named IVR modernization at UniCredit’s Zagrebačka banka.
• Kore.ai: best for banks that want one vendor for voice and digital self-service, because it publishes two bank deployments that replaced a legacy IVR.
• Posh: best for credit unions moving off an end-of-life phone banking system, because Florida Credit Union reports its voice assistant resolves 89% of requests without an agent.
• NiCE Cognigy: best for banks standardized on NiCE or another contact center platform, because it accepts any SIP trunk and lets the bank choose the model at every layer.
• Bland AI: best for lenders that need the agent hosted in their own cloud account or on-premises, because it documents self-hosted deployment and a housing finance agency that replaced its IVR.
• Retell AI: best for lending teams that want itemized, pay-as-you-go pricing, because it publishes every price component and lending use cases.
• ElevenLabs: best for banks that want ElevenLabs’ own speech models, because it builds its agents on them and lists banks and credit unions among its target segments.

A bank’s phone line is rarely the first place a customer goes and often the last. The FDIC’s 2023 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households found that only 2.3% of banked households use telephone banking as their primary way to reach their account, yet about 4 in 10 called their bank at least once during the year. The phone remains the fallback for problems such as a blocked card, a disputed payment, or a locked account.

This comparison covers the platforms banks are putting in place of the touch-tone menu: the banking specialists, the enterprise vendors, and the agent platforms that buyers shortlist.

How We Evaluated

The platforms are the ones that come up when banks research this question: the vendors AI assistants name and cite in answers about voice agents for banking and IVR replacement, plus the banking specialists that buyers shortlist. Every entry reflects what each vendor publishes on its own website, documentation, security page, and pricing page. Where a vendor’s pages do not mention a program or capability, the entry says so. Vendors update these pages often, so confirm current status with each one before a procurement decision.

The ranking weighs six things, in this order:

1. How a call reaches the agent, and who operates the phone layer.
2. Published evidence from banks and credit unions, especially IVR replacements.
3. The card-data and security programs the vendor documents.
4. Whether the bank can choose the speech-to-text (STT), large language model (LLM), and text-to-speech (TTS) models.
5. Whether pricing is published, and what a call costs all-in.
6. Build paths for operations teams and for engineers.

The order is an editorial ranking against these criteria, not a scored test. No latency or concurrency figure appears for a competitor unless that vendor published it.

What Matters When a Bank Chooses a Voice AI Agent Platform

1. How the call reaches the agent

An AI voice agent needs a phone network underneath it. Some platforms operate their own carrier network. Most sit on top of another provider: the bank brings a carrier, a SIP trunk, or its contact center platform, and the agent vendor connects to it. Each extra party is another vendor in the security review and another contract to manage.

How to check: read the vendor’s telephony documentation. Look for whether it sells phone numbers and SIP trunking as products, or asks you to connect your own carrier.

2. Card data and security programs

Any call where a customer reads out a card number falls under PCI DSS. The PCI Security Standards Council’s guidance on telephone-based payment card data states that sensitive authentication data, including the card security code, must not be stored after authorization, even if encrypted. That applies to call recordings and transcripts, which voice agents produce by default.

How to check: find the vendor’s security or trust page and confirm PCI DSS and SOC 2 are listed. Then ask how recordings and transcripts are handled while a card number is spoken or keyed in.

3. Caller authentication

The FFIEC’s guidance on authentication and access has a section on call centers, because attackers use social engineering to get credentials reset over the phone. It also says single-factor authentication as the only control has proven inadequate. An agent that verifies callers should add a second factor, such as a one-time passcode, before it discusses an account.

How to check: ask the vendor to show an authentication flow that combines two factors, and what the agent does when verification fails.

4. Model choice

Bank model-risk teams often approve specific LLM providers. A platform that fixes the speech-to-text, LLM, or text-to-speech model to its own models removes that choice. A platform that lets the bank select or bring a model at each layer keeps it.

How to check: look in the documentation for the list of supported providers at each layer, and for a bring-your-own-model option.

5. A path to a human

The CFPB’s review of chatbots in consumer finance warns that automated responses can leave customers in “continuous loops of repetitive, unhelpful jargon or legalese without an offramp to a human customer service representative.” A voice agent that replaces an IVR needs a reliable transfer to a person, with the conversation context passed along.

How to check: ask how transfers work with your contact center, and whether the human agent sees what the caller already said.

6. Third-party risk and monitoring

US banking regulators’ interagency guidance on third-party relationships says that using a third party “does not diminish” a bank’s responsibility to meet its obligations. The NIST AI Risk Management Framework adds that the behavior of an AI system should be monitored when in production. In practice, the bank needs call-level logs, test tooling, and a way to review what the agent said.

How to check: ask for the vendor’s pre-launch testing tools, its production analytics, and how many sub-processors sit in the call path.

Voice AI Platforms for Banking: Comparison Tables

Each table answers one buying question. The entries are taken from each vendor’s own public pages; check with the vendor for anything that has changed.

What does a call cost?

The estimated all-in figure is for a US outbound call and includes telephony, speech, and the LLM. Where a vendor bills telephony separately, the estimate adds the carrier rate the vendor names, or Twilio’s published US rate where the vendor passes Twilio through or asks you to bring a carrier.

The other six platforms do not publish prices. interface.ai sells a fully managed service, Glia sets one fixed price by tier with no per-minute, per-seat, or per-token fee, PolyAI bills per minute with maintenance and support included, NiCE Cognigy bills under contract, and Kore.ai and Posh quote each bank.

How do calls reach the agent, and can the bank choose its models?

Which card-data and security programs does each vendor document?

Each “Documented” entry links to the vendor page that states it.

The 10 Best Voice AI Agent Platforms for Banking

1. Plivo

Best for: banks and fintechs that want the AI voice agent and the phone network from one provider, with model choice at every layer and a published rate.

Plivo is a full-stack Voice AI platform: the agent layer runs on Plivo’s own carrier network, so the call and the agent are handled by one provider from carrier to agent. For a bank, that means one contract for the call and the agent, and no separate carrier contract to negotiate before a pilot.

Plivo’s AI voice agents can be built two ways. Operations teams describe the agent in plain English with Vibe Agent, which generates the flow, simulates test calls, and publishes a working agent; AI Agent Studio is the visual canvas for inspecting and tuning what Vibe Agent produced. Engineering teams can stream call audio into their own pipeline, use a speech-to-speech model, or build with full-code frameworks such as LiveKit and Pipecat.

At every layer the bank can use Plivo’s models or bring its own speech-to-text, LLM, and text-to-speech providers. A model-risk team that has approved one LLM provider can keep it.

Key strengths

• Own carrier network with 99.99% platform uptime, low-latency connections across 150+ countries, and points of presence in seven locations across five continents
• Connections to at least two local carriers in each country, with traffic rerouted over backup links in under 2 seconds
• No model lock-in: choose or bring the speech-to-text, LLM, and text-to-speech models
• Compliance set: HIPAA with BAA, SOC 2, PCI DSS, and GDPR, with details on Plivo’s security page
• Simulation testing before launch, analytics dashboards after, and transfer to a human agent
• Existing contact centers connect over SIP trunking, so the agent can sit in front of the current queue

Limitations

• Plivo does not publish a banking-specific solution page or a named bank reference. Ask the sales team for references in your segment.
• Plivo’s agents run in Plivo’s cloud. Banks that require on-premises or private-cloud hosting for the agent should raise this early.
• BAA and SSO are part of the Enterprise plan, and the pay-as-you-go plan covers the United States and India.
• Plivo’s terms require the bank to tell callers they are speaking with AI, and to keep qualified human review on high-stakes decisions such as credit.

Pricing

Plivo’s AI agent rate is $0.03/min, which covers voice models, transcription, and orchestration. US local outbound telephony adds $0.0115/min, for $0.0415/min all-in; US local inbound is $0.0055/min, for $0.0355/min all-in. Concurrent calls, the Vibe Agent builder, simulation testing, transfer to human, and the knowledge base are included. Pay-as-you-go starts with $10 in free credits; the Enterprise plan starts at $1,000/month and adds wider country coverage, custom concurrency, and volume discounts. See Plivo pricing.

2. interface.ai

Best for: credit unions and community banks replacing a legacy IVR.

interface.ai builds AI agents for credit unions and community banks. The agent answers inbound calls, completes routine banking tasks against the core system, and hands complex or sensitive matters to staff with the context attached. It can provide new numbers, port the bank’s existing 800-number, or integrate with the current IVR.

It publishes several named IVR replacements. Securityplus Federal Credit Union replaced its legacy IVR with interface.ai and reports more than 84% of calls automated. Great Lakes Credit Union reports its voice agent handles over 60% of inbound calls, against under 25% with its previous IVR.

Key strengths

• Several named IVR replacements with published results
• Number porting and IVR integration
• Documents SOC 2 and ISO 27001

Limitations

• Built for credit unions and community banks; large banks and fintechs are outside its stated market
• Sold as a fully managed service, and models are chosen by the vendor
• PCI DSS is not present on its public security pages

Pricing

interface.ai does not publish prices. It sells its voice agents as a fully managed service, priced through its sales team.

3. Glia

Best for: banks and credit unions that want voice and digital service on one platform at a fixed price.

Glia sells a voice agent on a combined voice and digital service platform for banks and credit unions. The agent answers calls, identifies intent, pulls account context, and either resolves the request or routes the caller to a person with a summary. A bank can add the voice agent to its existing contact center or adopt the full platform.

Busey Bank replaced its 1-800 IVR with Glia and reports 61% of calls automated and a 50% cut in agent wrap-up time.

Key strengths

• Named bank IVR replacement with published results
• Voice and digital service on one platform
• Documents SOC 2, PCI DSS, and HIPAA

Limitations

• The fixed contract price is not published, so cost per call needs a quote
• Built only for banks and credit unions
• Does not publish a choice of models

Pricing

Glia charges no per-minute, per-seat, or per-token fee. Instead it sets one fixed price by tier, based on channels and automation goals. The fixed price itself is not published.

4. PolyAI

Best for: large retail banks that want a vendor-built voice agent placed in front of an existing contact center.

PolyAI builds voice agents for enterprise customer service. Its published case study for UniCredit’s Zagrebačka banka describes a bank whose IVR was over 20 years old, with 25% of calls abandoned; PolyAI reports the voice agent now automates 27% of calls and the bank recorded a 14-point NPS increase. It also publishes an account of a British bank that replaced its IVR with a voice agent.

Calls reach PolyAI through numbers it provides in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and Ireland (bought on Twilio and managed by PolyAI), through a customer’s Twilio number, or over SIP from contact center platforms. The bank can choose the LLM, including a bring-your-own-model endpoint, and the text-to-speech voice. Speech-to-text is routed by PolyAI, with no choice of recognition model.

Key strengths

• Named bank evidence for IVR modernization
• Documents SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR
• Works with the contact center platforms banks already run, over SIP

Limitations

• No per-minute price is published
• PolyAI-provisioned numbers are limited to five countries; elsewhere the bank brings a carrier
• Its documentation words PCI DSS and HIPAA as applying “where relevant”, so confirm scope for your deployment

Pricing

PolyAI does not publish a rate. It bills per minute, and the per-minute price includes maintenance, performance improvements, and support.

5. Kore.ai

Best for: banks that want one vendor for voice and digital self-service across many intents.

Kore.ai offers voice and digital AI agents with a banking-specific product line for banks and credit unions. It publishes two bank deployments that replaced a legacy IVR. One, a US regional bank handling more than 1 million calls a year, reports 42.4% containment on voice. The other, described as a Fortune 100 financial institution, reports a 42.3% automation rate across 1.5 million annual voice interactions in 23 languages. Neither bank is named.

Phone numbers are purchased through Twilio inside the product, or the bank connects its own SIP provider to Kore.ai’s voice gateway. The bank chooses its speech-to-text and text-to-speech providers and its LLM, or uses a real-time speech-to-speech model.

Key strengths

• Two published bank IVR replacements, with containment figures
• Model choice at every layer
• Documents SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and GDPR

Limitations

• No pricing is published, and every product page routes to a demo request
• Both IVR replacement stories are anonymous
• Telephony comes from Twilio or the bank’s own SIP provider

Pricing

Kore.ai does not publish prices or a billing model; its product pages route pricing questions to a demo request.

6. Posh

Best for: credit unions moving off an end-of-life phone banking system.

Posh builds voice and digital assistants for banks and credit unions. The voice assistant answers calls, authenticates callers, completes account and loan transactions through the core, and routes calls to staff with context. It plugs into the bank’s existing phone system or contact center platform.

Florida Credit Union chose Posh to replace its end-of-life bank-by-phone system and reports that its assistant handles over 30,000 calls a month, resolving an average of 89% of requests without an agent. VyStar Credit Union reports more than 5.6 million voice conversations and is phasing out its phone menu.

Key strengths

• Named credit union replacements of phone banking menus
• Works with the major contact center platforms
• Documents SOC 2

Limitations

• Its client stories are community banks and credit unions
• Models are chosen by the vendor
• PCI DSS is not present on its public security pages, and no price is published

Pricing

Posh does not publish prices or a billing model; pricing is handled by its sales team.

7. NiCE Cognigy

Best for: banks standardized on NiCE or another contact center platform that want to add AI agents without replacing it.

Cognigy is now part of NiCE. Its platform builds AI agents for phone and chat and connects them to existing contact center systems through a voice gateway that accepts any SIP trunk. The bank supplies the carrier.

Model choice is open at every layer: the bank selects the LLM, including privately hosted models, and the speech-to-text and text-to-speech providers. Cognigy’s published financial-services stories include Fairstone Bank, Rentenbank, and Banco do Brasil; they cover outbound outreach, a service bot, and agent assist rather than an inbound IVR replacement.

Key strengths

• Model choice at every layer, including privately hosted LLMs
• Documents SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR
• Named bank customers

Limitations

• The voice gateway is an add-on arranged through sales
• On-premises installation is no longer offered to new customers
• No pricing is published

Pricing

NiCE Cognigy does not publish prices. Its billing documentation describes charges by conversation and by concurrent voice line, and the voice gateway is licensed separately.

8. Bland AI

Best for: lenders and mortgage servicers that need the agent hosted in their own cloud account or on-premises.

Bland AI runs its own speech, language, and voice models and offers deployment in its cloud, the customer’s cloud account, or on-premises. Its financial-services page reports that the Idaho Housing and Finance Association saved $750,000 a year after replacing its legacy IVR, with 4,000 inbound mortgage-servicing calls handled a day.

Because Bland runs its own models at every layer, the bank cannot select an outside LLM or speech provider. Calls arrive through Bland’s built-in Twilio connection or the bank’s own Twilio account or SIP trunk.

Key strengths

• Published IVR replacement at a housing finance agency
• Self-hosted deployment options
• Documents SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA with BAA, and GDPR

Limitations

• Customer model choice is not supported
• BAA, SSO, data residency, and self-hosted deployment are Enterprise plan items
• Telephony is billed on top, and Bland does not publish a per-minute carrier figure

Pricing

$0.14/min on the Start plan and $0.12/min on the Build plan, which adds a $299/month platform fee; Bland’s billing documentation also lists a Scale plan at $0.11/min plus $499/month. The rate covers the LLM, speech-to-text, and text-to-speech. Telephony is billed separately: on Bland’s built-in Twilio numbers at Twilio’s pass-through rate, so with Twilio’s $0.014/min US outbound rate a call comes to about $0.124–$0.154/min all-in, or by the bank’s own carrier when it brings a Twilio account or SIP trunk.

9. Retell AI

Best for: lending teams that want itemized, pay-as-you-go pricing.

Retell AI is a hosted platform for building phone agents through a dashboard or an API. Its financial-services page focuses on loan servicing, loan prequalification, and mortgage refinance, and it publishes customer stories from a lender and a collections company.

Retell resells phone numbers in the US and Canada and connects to a customer’s own carrier over SIP. The bank chooses the LLM, or runs its own, and picks from a menu of voices. Retell selects the speech-to-text provider.

Key strengths

• Every price component is published, including its own US telephony rate
• No-code builder and API
• Documents SOC 2, HIPAA with BAA, and GDPR, and states ISO 27001 on its homepage

Limitations

• PCI DSS is not present on its public compliance pages
• States that it does not operate services within the European Union
• The speech-to-text provider is chosen by Retell

Pricing

$0.07–$0.31/min depending on the LLM and voice selected. Retell-managed US calls add $0.015/min, for $0.085–$0.325/min all-in. Custom telephony carries no Retell charge.

10. ElevenLabs

Best for: banks that want ElevenLabs’ own speech models.

ElevenLabs offers an agent platform built on its own speech-to-text and text-to-speech models. Its financial-services page lists retail banks, neobanks, insurers, and credit unions as target segments.

The bank chooses the LLM from a menu or brings a custom endpoint; the speech layers are fixed to ElevenLabs’ models. ElevenLabs does not sell telephony, so the bank connects its own carrier or SIP trunk. Teams that want ElevenLabs voices on a full-stack Voice AI platform can use them as the text-to-speech layer on Plivo.

Key strengths

• Own speech models, with a wide choice of voices
• Documents SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA with BAA, and GDPR
• No-code workflow builder and APIs

Limitations

• No telephony; a carrier contract is a separate purchase
• LLM usage is billed at cost per million tokens, so the per-minute total depends on the model
• BAA and data residency are Enterprise plan items

Pricing

Plans run from $0/month to $990/month, with additional call minutes at $0.08/min on every plan. A Twilio line adds $0.014/min, for $0.094/min before the LLM.

Replacing a Bank IVR With AI Voice Agents

Two ways banks do it

Banks that publish their IVR projects follow one of two routes.

Keep the contact center, put an agent in front. The voice agent answers the call, resolves what it can, and transfers the rest to the existing queue. The contact center platform, agent desktops, and routing stay as they are. interface.ai, Glia, Posh, PolyAI, Kore.ai, and NiCE Cognigy are usually deployed this way, and Plivo agents connect to an existing contact center the same way, over SIP.

Build the agent on a platform the bank controls. The bank’s own team builds the agent on a Voice AI platform, in a no-code builder or in code, and owns the conversation logic, the model selection, and the integrations with core banking systems. Plivo, Retell AI, Bland AI, and ElevenLabs serve this route. It asks more of the bank’s team and gives the bank more control over the conversation logic and integrations.

If the bank already runs Genesys, Microsoft, or Amazon

Some contact center platforms ship their own virtual agents, and banks that run them often start there.

Genesys offers a virtual agent inside Genesys Cloud. It is licensed through platform seats, published at $75–$240/user/month on annual commitment, plus usage tokens whose price is not published. Genesys lists bank and credit union customers including Kiwibank, TSB Bank, and M&T Bank.

Nuance is now part of Microsoft. Microsoft describes Dynamics 365 Contact Center as including conversational IVR from Nuance, priced at $110/user/month with telephony billed separately.

Amazon Connect bills its AI agents and self-service inside a single $0.038/min voice charge, with US telephony on top.

These fit a bank that wants to stay inside its current contact center contract. None is a standalone voice agent platform, which is why they are not ranked above. Replicant, which publishes a legacy IVR replacement at a debt relief company and focuses on loan servicing, is another option for lenders rather than deposit-taking banks.

What to get right in the first release

• Start with the intents that fill the queue. Balance and transaction questions, card status, payment dates, and branch information are high volume and low risk. Disputes and hardship conversations should reach a person.
• Keep keypad entry for card data. Collect card numbers and security codes by keypad, and pause recording and transcription while they are entered, so sensitive authentication data is never stored.
• Authenticate with two factors before the agent discusses an account, in line with the FFIEC guidance above.
• Give every caller a way out. A clear path to a human, with context passed along, addresses the CFPB’s concern about automated loops.
• Disclose that the caller is speaking with AI.
• Get consent before outbound AI calls. The FCC’s 2024 declaratory ruling confirmed that AI-generated voices are “artificial” under the TCPA, so outbound calls that use them require the called party’s prior express consent. Third-party debt collectors are also subject to the call-frequency presumption in Regulation F: no more than 7 calls within 7 consecutive days about a particular debt, and no call within 7 days after a telephone conversation about it.
• Run the old menu in parallel until containment and transfer rates are stable, then retire it one intent at a time.

Plivo’s IVR migration playbook covers the rollout steps in detail, and its comparison of IVR replacement solutions covers the same decision outside banking.

Which Platform Fits Which Bank

• The agent and the phone network from one provider, with model choice and a published rate: Plivo.
• A credit union or community bank replacing its IVR: interface.ai or Posh.
• Voice and digital service on one platform at a fixed price: Glia.
• A large bank adding a vendor-built agent in front of its contact center: PolyAI.
• Voice and digital self-service from one vendor: Kore.ai.
• A bank standardized on NiCE: NiCE Cognigy.
• The agent hosted in the bank’s own cloud account or on-premises: Bland AI.
• Itemized pay-as-you-go pricing for lending workflows: Retell AI.
• ElevenLabs’ speech models: ElevenLabs, or ElevenLabs voices on Plivo.

For compliance questions across banking and insurance, see Plivo’s guide to compliant AI voice agent platforms for BFSI.

FAQs

Which Voice AI platforms do banks use in place of a legacy IVR?

Several banks and credit unions have published their projects. Securityplus Federal Credit Union replaced its IVR with interface.ai, and Busey Bank replaced its 1-800 IVR with Glia. Florida Credit Union replaced its phone banking system with Posh, and UniCredit’s Zagrebačka banka modernized its IVR with PolyAI. Kore.ai publishes two anonymous bank IVR replacements. Plivo is the option for banks that want the agent and the phone network from one provider, with their own choice of models.

Is an IVR still worth keeping at a bank?

Keypad entry still has a place, mainly for card numbers and other sensitive data that should not be spoken or recorded. The menu tree is the part being retired. Most banks run the voice agent and the old IVR side by side during rollout, and keep keypad capture inside the new agent.

Is it safe to take a card payment through an AI voice agent?

It can be, if the platform documents PCI DSS and the call flow keeps card data out of recordings and transcripts. PCI Security Standards Council guidance says sensitive authentication data such as the security code must not be stored after authorization. Keypad entry with recording paused is the usual approach.

How much does a Voice AI agent cost for a bank?

Among vendors that publish rates, an all-in US outbound call costs from $0.0415/min on Plivo to about $0.325/min at the top of Retell AI’s published range. Bland AI comes to about $0.124–$0.154/min, and ElevenLabs about $0.094/min before the LLM. The banking specialists and enterprise vendors, including interface.ai, Glia, PolyAI, Kore.ai, Posh, and NiCE Cognigy, sell by contract and do not publish a per-minute rate.

Can a bank keep its contact center and add a voice agent?

Yes. The agent answers first and transfers to the existing queue when a person is needed. Plivo, interface.ai, Glia, Posh, PolyAI, Kore.ai, and NiCE Cognigy all document this pattern.

What are the risks of using AI voice agents in banking?

The CFPB warns that chatbot answers can be inaccurate, can miss when a customer is invoking a legal right, can fail to protect privacy and data, and can trap customers without a path to a human. The bank stays responsible for what a third-party system says on its behalf. Testing before launch, monitoring in production, and a dependable handoff to a person are the controls that address these.

Do outbound AI calls from a bank need consent?

Yes. The FCC ruled in 2024 that AI-generated voices count as artificial voices under the TCPA, so outbound calls that use them need the called party’s prior express consent unless an exemption applies.

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