Posting Donation Transactions to Blackbaud Merchant Services via API

Hamza Tanveer · April 12

Our application collects donations through kiosks and online platforms, handling all payments internally. One of our clients uses Blackbaud Merchant Services (BBMS) to record their transactions. We need an API reference to post finalized transaction data—including donor name, account holder info, amount, and timestamp—to BBMS for accurate record-keeping and financial tracking.

Erik Leaver · April 13

@Hamza Tanveer You won't want to post any data to bbms if you already have taken the transactions as BBMS is a Merchant account. More likely you want to record those payments in the system of record. The Gifts API is likely what you want.

Hamza Tanveer · April 14

@Erik Leaver
I am confused if that gift's api record will show up in transactions on my merhcant services dashboard transactions's page?

Mina Mistry · April 15

Hi @Hamza Tanveer

The SKY Payments API is used to process payments with Blackbaud customers' merchant accounts. Only transactions that are processed with Blackbaud's merchant services will appear in the merchant account.

Blackbaud customers will use their CRM (it could be RE NXT, BBCRM, etc.) to reflect all donations from all sources. The SKY Gift API can be used to record a payment from outside Blackbaud in RE NXT.

Hope that helps - let us know if you have any other questions.

Mina

Alex Wong · April 16

@Hamza Tanveer
What both Erik and Mina said is correctly reflecting on your original post's information, as they understands it, which is what I understood too: that “our application collects donations through kiosks and online platforms”. Meaning the actual “charging” of the credit cards is already done. BBMS (Blackbaud Merchant Services) is for charging credit cards and recording the transactions of these charges. You are not going to be able to “give” BBMS transactions that were already charged for BBMS to “record” it for you

So the question then is, why do you want BBMS to record the transactions? for what business purpose?

Hamza Tanveer · April 18

@Alex Wong
Yes, that’s correct — my clients are specifically asking for donor name, amount, and time of donation to appear on the BBMS transactions page. This is likely for internal record-keeping or reconciliation purposes. They want to be able to see this information consolidated in one place within BBMS, even though the actual charging has already taken place through our application. So it's less about processing the payment and more about visibility and traceability within BBMS.

Alex Wong · April 19

@Hamza Tanveer
BBMS is a merchant service, not a donation platform or a CRM. What your client is asking is not possible

Erik Leaver · April 28

@Hamza Tanveer You might consider using BBMS for the payments through your system for your customer. That would solve the customer problem by consolidating all payments through BBMS. We have a robust payments API & just launched Blackbaud Integrated Payments to make this possible.

Hamza Tanveer · May 27

@Mina Mistry
i want to post data of my donor that is donating from my platform but in gift api what i can see is only the amount tabs, what could be the best combination of keys for me to post this type of record
1. Donor (name and email)
2. Amount of gift
3. Donor attached to that specific gift

Alex Wong · June 1

@Hamza Tanveer
I don't know what you mean by “what I can see is only the amount tabs”

https://developer.sky.blackbaud.com/api#api=58bdd5edd7dcde06046081d6&operation=CreateGift

this API endpoint is used to create a gift record in RE directly and has all the fields needed to create the gift record (i.e. gift date, amount, type, constituent, gift splits, etc)

Posting Donation Transactions to Blackbaud Merchant Services via API

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