Quick Overview

Slate Payments is the built-in gateway and payment processor you should consider using instead of, or in addition to, integrating Slate with external processors. You can use Slate Payments to collect an application fee or event payment, but still use another (external) payment provider for e.g. your enrollment deposit, if required.

Slate Payments typically has lower fees than any payment processor that an organization may be using, supports the greatest diversity of payment methods, provides the most robust international support, and provides the most direct integration with Slate. If you need to capture payments directly on a form/event, Slate Payments is very much the right tool to use!

Since 2017 we have processed over $1.25bn in total payment volume. Slate Payments is powered by the Stripe Connect platform. In 2023, collectively, all the businesses running on Stripe passed the milestone of $1 trillion in total payment volume for a calendar year (which sums to roughly 1% of total global GDP).

Main benefits

1. Slate Payments allows you to embed payment capture on a form/event via the Slate payment widget (i.e. no form submission without payment!)

2. the Stripe payment element will automatically display all the acceptable/available/supported payment methods for the payer’s location and device (e.g. card brands and payment wallets that may be more popular in other parts of the world)

3. very competitive cost ...

   1. credit card payments, a processing fee of 2.3% plus $0.30 per transaction (across the board, incl. Amex). For a U.S. institution, transaction fees are the same for credit cards originating in any country!

   2. ACH payments (US bank accounts only), a fee of $0.25/per transaction + a fee of $1.00 per one-time payment for NACHA required ACH bank validation + verification.

4. Slate Payments allows your users to manage refunds directly inside Slate (refund initiation from the payment activity or via the payment history)

5. flexibility for 'payouts' (you could direct Course Fee payments or deposits to a different external bank account on a different schedule)

6. built-in reconciliation reporting (via the transfers/pre-filter payment history) with the option of creating custom payment-base reports (and turning those into scheduled exports to update your ERP/SIS via FTP or webservice)

7. self-service setup and easy testing mode

8. ability to easily enable/disable ACH and/or CC by payment account prompt value (i.e. any custom fee type you define in Slate)

9. the Payment Terminal / tap-to-pay feature inside the Slate mobile app, allows you to accept contactless payments on your mobile device without having to use extra hardware. You can accept payments from contactless credit or debit cards, Apple Pay, Apple Watch, and smartphones with other digital wallets.

We actively continue to enhance the capabilities of Slate Payments (e.g. additional card-present / MOTO capabilities announced at Summit 2024, self-service discovery of refund reference IDs (available now!), enhanced scheduled/recurring payments, payment plans beyond the Advancement-lifecycle use cases of recurring donations).