Payment Processing Overview

Blackbaud's payment services make it easy for you to accept payments from your supporters. To process payments, you need Blackbaud Payment Service to collect payment information, a gateway and processor to send and receive the information, and an account to collect and deposit the funds into your bank.

Blackbaud Payment Service

The Blackbaud Payment Service is a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards compliant vault that collects and stores payment information. Use Blackbaud Payment Service to:

  • Securely store sensitive credit card, bank account, and merchant account information.

  • Replace credit card numbers with reference tokens in your database.

To connect with payment gateways — such as Blackbaud Merchant Services or a third party gateway — you need a Blackbaud Payment Service account. To learn how to set up payment accounts, see Get Started with Blackbaud Integrated Payments.

Payment Gateway and Processor

  • A payment gateway sends encrypted transaction details from Blackbaud Payment Service to your payment processor. It also returns the response from the bank — such as approved or declined — to Blackbaud Payment Service.

  • A payment processor sends data from your gateway to the bank and returns a result — such as approved or declined — to the gateway. If approved, the processor also deposits the transaction amount from the account holder’s bank to your merchant account.

Blackbaud Merchant Services is Blackbaud’s end-to-end payment processing solution that serves as both a payment gateway and processor. It supports US, Canadian, and Australian dollars, British pounds, and Euros. For more information about the benefits of Blackbaud Merchant Services, see Blackbaud Integrated Payments for New Users.

Merchant Accounts

A merchant account is provided by a bank or payment processor. It enables you to accept payments.

After your payment processor receives funds from an account holder’s bank, it deposits them into your merchant account. The funds then transfer to your bank account where they are available to withdraw.

Your Blackbaud Merchant Services account also serves as your merchant account. Create multiple merchant accounts if your organization needs to:

  • Accept multiple currencies

  • Send payments to different bank accounts

  • Display different information on supporters’ credit card or bank statements, such as a local affiliate’s name or contact information

You can create merchant accounts at any time from the Admin section of Blackbaud's website under Settings, Merchant accounts. For more information, see Get Started with Blackbaud Integrated Payments.

Account Configurations

Account configurations determine:

  • Which card types you accept

  • Whether transactions process in live or test mode, and

  • The level of fraud protection provided with settings such as Card Security Code (CSC) and Address Verification Service (AVS)

Add account configurations from the Blackbaud Merchant Services Web Portal under Settings, or from the Admin section of Blackbaud's website under Settings, Merchant accounts. For more information, see Manage Account Configurations.

Note: Solutions that use new checkout (such as Blackbaud Donation Forms, Luminate Online, and Raiser's Edge NXT) follow industry best practice settings for AVS levels, CSC levels, and supported card types. As a result, new checkout overrides these settings you configure in the web portal. This practice reduces fraud risk while increasing payment acceptance rates for your organization.