Warning: Due to PCI v4 standards effective March 2025, credit and debit card transactions must be processed with the new checkout experience via Blackbaud Payment Service. To comply with the new requirements, create a new Luminate OnlinePayment Capabilities configuration compatible with the new checkout for all credit and debit card transactions. See the Checkout FAQ and Update Your Checkout Experience for more information.
Note: The following information is specific to donation payment processing. See Payment Capabilities for a more comprehensive explanation of Blackbaud and Luminate Online payment processing.
Your merchant account, donation campaign, an donation form configurations all affect which payment methods are available to your constituents. Consider what payment options you want to offer and ensure that you are configuring a merchant account that supports those payments, associating your campaign with the correct merchant account, and including the compatible data elements on your donation form.
Merchant account considerations
This is the first step in configuring which payment methods you accept and impacts your entire organization. Establish one or more merchant accounts to specify which payments can be processed and where those funds should be deposited.
Tip: We recommend using a Blackbaud Payment Service account with a Blackbaud Merchant Services account compatible with a checkout data element because it is the easiest way for you to accept the most payment methods and track processing end-to-end.
If you choose to use a Blackbaud Merchant Services account for your payment processing, a single click imports the configuration into Luminate Online Payment Capabilities as a gateway. If you choose an alternative payment processor, the integration requires more work and not all payment methods may be available. Review the summary in the chart below and see Payment Capabilities for more details and configuration instructions.
| Payment Method | Recommended payment processing supported payment methods | Alternative payment processing supported payment methods |
|---|---|---|
| Credit and debit card |
Automatically includes all cards supported by Blackbaud. |
Only available until March 2025. Manually select from all cards supported by Blackbaud. |
|
Direct debit |
US ACH Canadian ACSS coming in 2025 |
US ACH via a Blackbaud Merchant Services legacy account or integration with direct processors such as iATS or PayFlow Pro. |
| Digital wallets |
Apple Pay Google Pay PayPal (single payment - support for recurring coming in 2025) Venmo (single payment, US only) |
PayPal |
| Cash and check | Not related to merchant account selection. You may add cash and check payment options, regardless of the merchant account, during donation form design. | |
Donation campaign considerations
Your organization may have multiple donation campaigns and merchant accounts, but each campaign is associated with a only one merchant account. The campaign can only process payment methods configured for that merchant account.
For example, if you want to accept campaign donations via Apple Pay, your must associate the campaign with a Blackbaud Merchant Services account configured to accept digital wallets.
See Create a campaign for more details and instructions.
Tip: When converting campaigns from legacy merchant accounts to new checkout merchant accounts, we recommend you copy the campaign and make changes in the duplicate.
Donation form considerations
Each donation form belongs to a single campaign and inherits a merchant account association from that campaign. The merchant account defines which payment methods are available to display on the form. Make these selections while configuring the form's payment data element.
For example, if your merchant account accepts credit and debit card and digital wallet payments, you may chose to display all of these options. Alternatively, you may decide this form is only for credit and debit card transactions and not display digital wallet options. Digital wallets can still be displayed on other forms associated with the same merchant account.
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Every donation form associated with a checkout merchant account must include a checkout data element and may include a payment type data element. If you include both data elements, only the checkout element will display.
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Every donation form not associated with a checkout merchant account must include a payment types data element and not include a checkout data element.
Warning: All donation forms in a single campaign are associated with the same merchant account and must have the correct data elements present.