Blackbaud Merchant Services (Blackbaud Integrated Payments) Review

Blackbaud Merchant Services — renamed Blackbaud Integrated Payments (BBIP) in 2025 — is the payment processing built into Blackbaud's fundraising, school and CRM software: Raiser's Edge NXT, eTapestry, Luminate Online, Blackbaud Tuition Management and the rest. Blackbaud, founded in Charleston, South Carolina in 1981 and listed on Nasdaq, does not process or hold the money itself; under its August 2025 payments terms the designated processor is Stripe, Inc., and each organization signs Stripe's sub-merchant agreement through Blackbaud. The published US rate is 2.99% + $0.30 per card transaction (3.5% + $0.30 on American Express), 1% + $0.30 capped at $5 for ACH, and a $15 chargeback fee, with no setup or monthly processing fee. What the rate card does not show is the rest of the bill: a payment enablement fee charged to every customer with a payments-capable product whether or not they process anything, a new online-form platform fee of 1.5% to 2% on top of processing from 1 July 2026, and a software subscription that renews on a standard three-year term unless you give 45 days' notice. Add the 2020 ransomware breach — a $49.5 million multistate settlement, a $3 million SEC penalty, a $6.8 million California judgment and a 2024 FTC order — and a D- BBB rating for the company, and the convenience of one integrated system carries a real cost. It is the default for organizations already committed to Blackbaud software; it is not a processor anyone picks on its own merits.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using Blackbaud Merchant Services (Blackbaud Integrated Payments)’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

What it is

Blackbaud, Inc. has sold software to nonprofits since 1981 — its company page counts 45-plus years — and is headquartered at 65 Fairchild Street on Daniel Island in Charleston, South Carolina, listed on Nasdaq as BLKB and run by Mike Gianoni as CEO, president and vice chairman. Its products are the systems of record for a large share of US fundraising: Raiser's Edge NXT, eTapestry, Luminate Online and TeamRaiser, Blackbaud CRM, Altru for arts and cultural organizations, and Blackbaud Tuition Management and the education suite for private schools. Blackbaud Merchant Services was the processing built into those products; the 2025 annual report now describes 'Blackbaud Integrated Payments (formerly, Blackbaud Merchant Services)', and on 23 April 2025 Blackbaud launched BBIP as a brand that also extends to third-party software through a Payments API. The knowledgebase, the portal and most customers still say BBMS, and this review uses the names interchangeably.

Payments matter to Blackbaud's business. Its 2025 annual report attributes about 34% of revenue to transactional recurring revenue — roughly 55% of it donation processing, 20% consumer giving through JustGiving, 20% tuition management and 5% event-based usage — growing in the high single digits. The processing itself is outsourced: the Blackbaud Integrated Payments Terms, last updated 8 August 2025, name Stripe, Inc. as the designated processor and require each organization to accept Stripe's Sub-Merchant Processing Agreement. Blackbaud states in the same document that it does not process, receive or hold funds and is not a bank or money transmitter. In value-chain terms BBIP is an aggregator: your organization is a sub-merchant under Blackbaud's Stripe platform, Stripe or its bank partners settle to you, and Blackbaud issues the instructions.

Pricing

The USD Tier 1 fee schedule, which the terms incorporate by reference, is public: $0 setup, $0 monthly; 2.99% + $0.30 per transaction on Visa, Mastercard, Discover, Diners Club and JCB; 3.5% + $0.30 on American Express; PayPal 2.9% + $0.30; ACH 1% + $0.30 capped at $5 with a $5 return fee; Tap to Pay 2.99% + $0.45 (Amex 3.5% + $0.45); chargebacks $15. Canadian, sterling, euro, Australian and New Zealand accounts have their own schedules, from 1% + $0.26 plus GST in Australia to 2.79% + £0.20 in the UK. The US rate went up on 1 August 2024, from 2.79% to 2.99%, with Blackbaud citing 'the increasing costs of the payment industry'. Higher-volume organizations negotiate custom pricing that is not published. Fees are set off against disbursements or debited by ACH, and section 10.2 of the terms lets Blackbaud add or amend them at any time, effective 30 days after posting.

Two charges sit outside the rate card and are the reason the total cost is hard to compare. The first is the payment enablement fee, introduced in 2021: a flat fee, monthly by description and invoiced annually, charged to every customer with a payments-enabled solution 'even if you are not currently processing funds' — one fee per site ID regardless of how many products you own. Blackbaud's fee page and knowledgebase describe it at length without stating the amount; customers and third-party reviewers have reported it at about $50 a month. The second is new. Effective 1 July 2026 (1 September for PayPal and Venmo), the Online Form Platform Fee takes 1.5% of the gross transaction on event, membership, pledge and donation forms in Raiser's Edge NXT and eTapestry, and 2% on Blackbaud NetCommunity and Online Express forms, and Blackbaud's own FAQ confirms it 'is in addition to the standard Blackbaud Integrated Payments processing rates'. An online gift through an NXT form therefore costs 4.49% + $0.30 before anyone covers it, and 5% + $0.30 through NetCommunity. Asked how it can add a fee outside a renewal, Blackbaud points to the fee-change clause. Luminate Online, TeamRaiser, Blackbaud CRM and Altru are exempt.

The mitigation Blackbaud offers is to move the cost to donors. Donor Cover adds the calculated fee to the gift at checkout; Complete Cover asks the donor for an optional contribution that goes to Blackbaud rather than the charity, and in return waives the organization's processing fees on eligible transactions up to $3,000 a year per account — above the cap, standard fees apply. Blackbaud says more than 85% of donors opt in at participating organizations, and that customers using Complete Cover saved millions in fees in 2024. Both programmes are available only on select fundraising products and can be withdrawn at Blackbaud's discretion, and any surcharge or convenience-fee programme of your own needs Blackbaud's prior approval and 30 days' notice.

Funding, limits and the agreement

Disbursements run on cycles rather than next day. USD, CAD, GBP, AUD and NZD accounts can be on a daily schedule — every business day after a short funding window, covering card transactions approved by 11:59 pm Eastern — or on the four-times-a-month schedule, which is the only option in euros. ACH and ACSS direct debits wait five business days after approval before joining the next cycle, refunds and chargebacks are netted into the next cycle, and a disbursement is only created when the balance is positive; the knowledgebase adds that banks may take three to five business days more to post it. There is no instant or same-day payout. The per-transaction limit is $50,000 unless pre-approved. Under the terms Blackbaud may require a reserve account on reasonable notice, held by Stripe's bank rather than Blackbaud; may have Stripe delay or withhold payments where it expects a chargeback; may impose new fees or controls if it judges your losses excessive; and takes an ACH debit authorization over your bank account for anything owed. Errors on a statement must be disputed in writing within 30 days or are deemed accepted.

The payments terms have no term of their own and no early-termination fee: they end when the Blackbaud Solutions Agreement, the Stripe agreement or your account ends, and Blackbaud may end them immediately for breach or if its own deal with Stripe ends. The commitment is in the software contract underneath. Blackbaud's billing FAQ says contracts 'automatically renew on our standard 3-year term' unless changes are requested at least 45 days before the renewal date, and the 2025 annual report says most software customers are on three-year terms with more than 20% of renewing customers choosing four years or longer. That clause is what the BBB complaints are about.

The breach and the record since

In early 2020 an attacker used a customer's Blackbaud-hosted database to move across Blackbaud's hosted environments for roughly three months, exfiltrating unencrypted data from more than 13,000 customer organizations — donors' Social Security and bank account numbers, health and wealth information among it. Blackbaud paid a ransom of 24 bitcoin, worth about $250,000, and told customers on 16 July 2020 that bank account and Social Security data had not been accessed; within days its staff knew otherwise, and the correction took about two months. The SEC charged the company with misleading disclosures and inadequate disclosure controls and took a $3 million penalty on 9 March 2023. On 5 October 2023 Blackbaud entered administrative orders with 49 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia, paying $49.5 million and agreeing to overhaul its security and breach-notification practices. The FTC's order — data deletion, a comprehensive information-security programme, a data-retention schedule and breach reporting, with no fine — was finalized on 20 May 2024, and a $6.8 million final judgment with California's attorney general followed on 13 June 2024. The multidistrict consumer litigation in the District of South Carolina was denied class certification on 14 May 2024 and the Fourth Circuit declined to hear an appeal that July; Blackbaud's 2025 annual report, filed in February 2026, says all putative consumer class actions in US and Canadian courts have now been resolved, leaving two insurer subrogation suits active, and that the HHS, Australian and Canadian privacy-regulator inquiries are no longer active. None of this concerns card data handled by Stripe; all of it concerns the data your donors give you and Blackbaud stores.

Reputation

The public signals are for Blackbaud as a whole rather than the payments product, and they are poor. The BBB rates Blackbaud, Inc. D- for failing to respond to 22 complaints, records 25 complaints in the last three years and five closed in the last twelve months, and shows 1 out of 5 from 12 reviews; the profile carries the FTC action as a government action. The complaints read as this review would predict — a nonprofit re-enrolled for three years and $23,000 by an email to a former employee, a business held to a renewal it missed by the 45-day window, parents charged undisclosed $2.50 fees on tuition payments — and none is answered. Trustpilot shows 2.0 from 16 reviews on an unclaimed profile, 82% of them one star. Set against that are the product's real strengths for its audience: the integration, the updater, the fee-cover plug-ins, and a Level 1 PCI validation on the processing side.

Bottom line

Blackbaud Merchant Services grades C+. For an organization already on Raiser's Edge NXT or eTapestry it is the sensible default, and the fee-cover programmes can make the processing cost close to invisible on the ledger. Judged as a processor it is dear and opaque in the places that matter — a rate above the nonprofit market, an enablement fee due whether or not you process, a platform fee introduced mid-contract, funding on a cycle — and the company's breach history and BBB record are what they are. Model the fees against your own giving before renewal, ask for the enablement fee and the rate to be negotiated in writing, and treat the three-year software term, not the payments terms, as the contract you are signing.