Introducing Online Express Bill Pay

Lindsey Rix
Lindsey Rix Blackbaud Employee
Tenth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud K-12 Education Solutions™ Blog
In the latest release of The Education Edge 7.85 coming soon, we're introducing a new feature that enables you to accept student bill payments online in NetClassroom and manage those payments in Student Billing with Fast! Over the next couple blog posts, I’ll provide in detail some specifics about this great new feature but in this post I want to provide an overview of how Online Express Bill Pay works.

Online Express Bill Pay page


After you update to 7.85, you are ready to get started with Bill Pay. Online Express Bill Pay is found in Student Billing at the bottom of the left navigation bar. The feature is free, provided you sign up for Blackbaud Merchant Services and Blackbaud Payment Service.

Blackbaud Merchant Services is your secure payment processor. Merchant Services makes it easy, secure, and affordable to process credit card transactions.

To ensure compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) and Payment  Application Data Security Standards (PA DSS), we provide the Blackbaud Payment Service. The Blackbaud Payment Service integrates with your program to store sensitive credit card and merchant account information in a secure environment. In your program's database, credit card numbers are replaced with reference tokens. When you process credit card transactions, the Blackbaud Payment Service uses the reference tokens to match the transactions to the applicable credit card information.

As part of the Online Express Bill Pay feature, you will have access to the Blackbaud Merchant Services Web Portal to manage your account.


Before you sign up for Blackbaud Merchant Services and Blackbaud Payment Service, you will need to have your bank account information ready. For a list of items you will need, see the Set Up an Account with Blackbaud Merchant Services Checklist.

Important Parts of Online Express Bill Pay –

Manage Your Online Express Bill Pay Page

Security -

One of the wonderful things about Bill Pay is your ability to determine who has access to Bill Pay. More so, you can also decide who has access to manage online bill payment transactions.

Design -

In Student Billing, we made an easy to use Bill Pay Form Set Up screen with five tabs that walks you through each step of the form design process. You choose which options you need, customize the wording, create acknowledgments, and then preview the finished form.

NetClassroom –

For NetClassroom, you determine who [student relations and/or students] and when users can access the online bill payment page from the menu, under Billing.

Manage Transactions –

With our Manage Online Express Bill Pay Transactions screen, you can add undeposited transactions to new or existing deposits and then use Fast! to create payments.

Manage Online Express Bill Pay Transactions screen

Other Important Notes:


  • You can edit your online bill payment form as often as you need.
  • Throughout the Online Express Bill Pay feature we provided short help videos to show you how to use the feature.
  • If you need more help, on the Blackbaud.com website, we created an Online Express Bill Pay How-to Documentation page with all the latest help resources including a customizable handout for students and student relations.
  • On the main Online Express Bill Pay page, you can review a history of your recently committed deposits!
  • Periodically, you may be prompted to update your Online Express Bill Pay feature. It's easy to do and doesn't take much time. You'll receive a notice that improvements have been made to Bill Pay, click the Restart Now button and the software will install the update and restart the program for you!

Helpful Links:

Coming Next –

Look for a post from our incredible Education Edge Product Manager Courtney Grainger about why we developed Online Express Bill Pay for The Education Edge.

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