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.

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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 register for the Blackbaud Payment Service, visit the Blackbaud Payment Service sign-up page.

Tip: You’ll need to connect your Blackbaud Payment Service account to your Blackbaud solution, so retain the credentials for your records.

Payment gateway

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.

Note: Blackbaud solutions integrate with Blackbaud Merchant Services and certain third-party gateways. For more information about how to connect your third-party gateway, see Tier 3 Gateways.

Payment processor

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. It's both a payment gateway and processor that handles international transactions by supporting US, Canadian, and Australian dollars, British pounds, and Euros. For more information about the benefits of Blackbaud Merchant Services, see Blackbaud Merchant Services for New Users.

Merchant account

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.

Blackbaud requires you to provide key information that verifies your organization as a valid legal entity in the domiciled country. You will need to create a merchant account for each accepted currency.

Tip: Organization admins! To create a merchant account, sign in to Blackbaud's website and select Admin from the solution menu on the left. Then, from Settings, select Merchant accounts.

You may need to create multiple account configurations for testing purposes.

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To create an account configuration, log into the Blackbaud Merchant Services Web Portal. From Control Panel, Settings, expand Account configurations.