The financial services domain is undergoing tremendous change due to technological advancements and digitalization. The banking domain has a significant dependence on technology-enabled products with an essential need to have stable and well-performing products to ensure a great customer experience. Moreover, it is also vital that all activities performed by banking software should run smoothly and be error-free to deliver safe and secure transactions.

Contents 1. Why software testing for banking apps? 2. Regulation & Compliance 3. Digital Convergence 4. Enhanced User Experience 5. Stable Transactions with Payment Integrations 6. What are the Steps Involved in Banking App Testing? 7. What are the challenges faced while testing banking applications? 8. Conclusion 9. Why you should partner with TestingXperts?

Evidently, all customer-facing channels such as Banking and FinTech continue to undergo rapid changes due to digitization, and the need for effective testing has increased manifold to enable stable products. Especially for banking applications, it is critical to have high-performing apps, as they tend to serve millions of transactions. Importantly, there are certain characteristics with respect to banking applications that require deep analysis to enable stable and high-performing apps.

Banking applications should be able to deliver safe and secure transactions, for which effective end-to-end software testing of their systems is required. It should be taken up using various types of software testing methods to ensure defect-free applications. Moreover, as the banking software applications are complicated with many dependencies, thus the testing process requires more time and a complete understanding of the scope.

What are the essential features of a banking application?

Why software testing for banking apps?

1. Regulation & Compliance:

There is an increased focus on business transparency globally and there is a strong need to abide by certain regulatory compliance terms. Hence, efficient software testing is required to suffice various open banking API terms and conditions.

2. Digital Convergence:

Digitalization has brought in a paradigm shift in the banking services domain with the emergence of smartphones, tablets, and IoT based devices. The digital payments have eased the transactions to paperless currency for which end-to-end testing is utmost required.

3. Enhanced User Experience:

Today, users are tech-savvy with ever-changing customer expectations. The customer experience(CX) is at the heart of any business. There is more emphasis laid on application aspects such as usability, great user interface (UI) and stable performance at peak loads. In order to achieve all these intricate features, effective usability testing along with end-to-end performance testing is required to deliver great user experience (UX) and flawless performance.

4. Stable Transactions with Payment Integrations:

Banking apps require a stable payment gateway integrations to ensure effective transactions to customers. To achieve this, effective software testing is necessary.

5. Security and Privacy:

For all banking applications, the topmost priority is to safeguard the customer’s critical data and ensure safe transactions. With the cyber-attacks being rampant, it is important for banking applications to undergo vigorous security testing to protect and deliver a secure environment for customer transactions.

6. Emergence of New Technologies:

In order to reach more customers quickly, mobile banking has evolved in a large way with voice recognition apps and browser service applications. These apps should be thoroughly tested before going live to the market to ensure a flawless experience.

What are the Steps Involved in Banking App Testing?

Segregation of Data: The initial step in banking app testing is to perform research by gaining domain knowledge and understanding the expected industry standards.

Identification of the required tests: Based on the research performed, test requirements are implemented to meet the functional and business goals.

Creation of banking app test cases: An online banking application test suite is created based on the aspects of application’s performance, user experience, functionality, and security aspects.

Implementation of Functional testing: Testing activities such as test case review, test case execution, and test case preparation are run to validate and check whether the required functionalities are met as expected or not as outlined in the requirements document.

Validation of Database Structure: Data should be stored in an easy and structured format and follow the mechanism of data restoration. 

Data Encryption and Authentication: User Authentication and data encryption are assessed to ensure no data breach is reported in the banking app. In order to achieve this, banks are required to implement a multi-layer validation process, such as OTP or One Time Password. Automation tools like HPWebInspect and IBM App Scan can be used to perform security testing; and for manual testing tools like HTTP watch, Proxy Sniffer, Paros Proxy, etc. can be used. 

Examination of App Usability: In order to ensure the app usability for all, tests are performed to examine how easy is the app usage across its system

Validation of App Performance: The banking apps are monitored to check the app performance and the speed for loading the page across various browsers.

Confirmation of User-Acceptance: With a constant testing practice, the performance of the banking application is monitored to confirm the app is error-free and meets the required user-acceptance. Also, it is the last stage of testing performed by the end-users by considering the real-world scenarios. 

What are the challenges faced while testing banking applications?

The banking applications are critical to users, hence the developer has to ensure that the app functions effectively for the user. The app needs to work consistently across various operating systems and different browsers. The user should be able to use the app on the latest and older version of iOS and Android devices.

This is one of the biggest challenges while testing banking app as during system migration, i.e. migration from the older system to the new system, end-to-end testing of all procedures, and routines should be taken up. So, the team has to consider these requirements and as well make sure that the data is identified before transferring and uploading to the new system.

The teams need to verify the mobile banking apps stability to deal and provide real-time updates for the app users. This is really a big challenge while performing the integration testing as it has to deal with various real-time issues

It is a challenge for the teams to develop banking applications that meet user’s expectations and should get the complete requirements to deliver the best to the user

As the market is constantly changing its trend, the consumers are also in demand to experience the latest features and wish to have them. It is essential to keep track of market trends and develop apps to enchant users

Conclusion:

Banking applications are critical as they are directly linked to customers and involves millions of transactions. Hence, testing these applications is critical and various methods of software testing such as load/performance testing, security testing, usability testing and functional testing should be taken up to ensure bug-free, fully functional and high-performing applications. Partnering with Next-gen QA experts will help you to leverage the complete advantage of testing banking applications.

Why you should partner with TestingXperts?

TestingXperts (Tx) has been serving Banking and Financial services domain clients for years and has delivered effective business benefits to them. Tx with its pool of banking domain testing experts, devised an exhaustive test strategy that covered functional and non-functional testing. This was achieved by using various in-house automation frameworks and accelerators, which helped to deliver a well-defined road map for DevOps implementation for many global clients.

Tx has created frameworks (API automation, web & mobile automation, performance testing, and security testing automation) that resulted into proven success by reducing QA cycle times up to 80% and lowering the overall QA costs up to 60% with its Next-Gen Testing Solutions.

The post Why Software Testing is critical for Banking Applications? first appeared on TestingXperts.

Contents 1. Banking App Testing Challenges 2. Security is Critical 3. Complex Data 4. Omni-Channel Banking 5. Performance Failures 6. Integration with Programs 7. Usability testing 8. Real-time Activities 9. Internet Connections and Browsers 10. Time to Market 11. Devices 12. Security 13. Mobile Environmental Factors 14. Privacy 15. Conclusion

The banking domain has become multifarious with ever-changing and cutting-edge technology. With complex functionalities tangled into the banking applications, it is considered to be the most advanced and complicated enterprise solution. The day-to-day transactions made via banking applications call for high scalability, reliability, and precision in terms of data. Therefore, it is imperative to test banking applications under various set-ups. An adept test strategy for banking applications should comprise of Mobile, Cloud, Internet, and various other features linked to a banking application.

What are the characteristics of a banking app?

– Banking applications should be able to integrate with several other applications such as billing apps, credit cards, trading accounts, etc.

– The apps should be able to navigate fast and help to process secured transactions

– When a number of users use the application, it should be able to support all users with flawless performance

– The app should be able to handle any complicate workflows

– The storage capacity of the banking apps should be more

– The app must be user-friendly and support the users on all devices and across their platforms

– The app should have a high auditing capability to troubleshoot the customer issues

– There should be a fool-proof disaster management recovery to protect users from unfair practices

– The app should support service sectors such as for loans, retail, etc. and provide the scope to perform payments through multiple gateways

As a various number of banking transactions happen each day, these applications need to deliver a high performance that meets customer needs. Besides this, the banking sector needs robust reporting in order to monitor and record transaction and user interactions instantly. To ensure that the banking applications are performing efficiently well, testing is essential. However, there are numerous challenges from the testing point of view that need to be addressed. In this article, we have highlighted key challenges that are faced while testing any banking application.

Banking App Testing Challenges

Security is Critical

Banking applications are overloaded with private customer information and data. Therefore, it is essential to ensure security at all levels in an online application. However, security testing becomes quite challenging, especially when there is a variation in the network and operating system across various devices. A banking application must be compatible with all versions, operating systems, and devices etc. Security testing of banking applications is a must, and should adhere to all applicable security standards.

The bank should ensure that all access validation codes and one-time passwords work properly. To ensure that the software doesn’t have any defects or faults, a QA team needs to validate both positive as well as negative sides of the system, reporting it before any unauthorized access occurs.

Complex Data

One of the major challenges that become difficult to address while testing a banking application is the complexity of the data. Banking applications contain all sorts of private information, data, passwords, and assets of the customers stored in their back-end. It is imperative to ensure that the back-end databases are not affected by any malware and that the data within is protected.

A bank certainly needs to have an automation tool to check database connectivity and logical functions continuously. It is beneficial if this is done over a virtual private network (i.e. a VPN) in order to ensure safety across its private data.

Omni-Channel Banking

Omni-channel banking or the branchless banking is the modern concept where the financial markets are functioning without a need of any branch. And, this is a great challenge to the teams for understanding its end-to-end functionality and efficiency in mobile applications.

Performance Failures

Performance levels consist of infrastructure, connectivity, and back-end integration. The transactions happening through the application should be administered at regular interims. Moreover, load and stress tests should frequently be performed to ensure multiple support for transactions at the same time.

Integration with Programs

Banking apps should have the ability to integrate with the programs that are used by users. Also, the applications should be capable to handle every complex workflow without any hurdles and troubles. While integrating with any third-party websites, there is much scope to get bugs and issues, hence the QA teams have to be cautious to deal with issues related to bugs and incompatibility.

Usability testing

Banking apps are being accessed by wide number of people but not every person is having with the technical skills to perform banking tasks with ease. The banking should be user-friendly so that everyone can easily access it, if not these can lead disinterest among the people who are unable to use it with ease. Hence, the app has to be tested across different groups of customers.

Real-time Activities

Banking applications need to provide real-time updates on the transactions to the customers as well as the back-end. It is important that the functionality of the application is continuously managed and identified by the testing teams. If there are any network connectivity issues that can hamper the real-time updates of the transactions, the teams should ensure proper testing of the application for any response delay.

Internet Connections and Browsers

User may login the app by using various devices, different browsers and from different internet connections. If the app fails to respond in any of the scenario then this can create a negative impact. Hence, to avoid such situations, teams have to check the performance of the app across all internet connections and browsers.

Time to Market

The addition of new features is a way to attract more customers, but with reduced time to market, there is a pressure that causes testing teams to cut short the testing cycles.

Devices

The present market is having a multitude of devices. If any of the devices is not considered, then this may be a big drawback and can create complexities. Hence, while testing the applications, it is necessary to consider every device across networks and platforms.

Security

Security is an important challenge for the banking sector. When planning for security testing, it is essential to consider all security standards in accordance with mobile devices, networks, operating systems, and platforms.

Mobile Environmental Factors

There are several mobile environmental factors that can affect the behaviour of the mobile bank application. The app can get affected by the background applications, memory card, camera usage, GPS, switching of the network, the state of the battery, etc. The integration of the mobile app with all these features may be a big challenge if the testing team fails to consider all these possible scenarios. Hence, it is important for the teams to consider every environmental factor while testing.

Privacy

Privacy is a challenging issue in mobile apps. Mobile devices are much personalized as they consist user’s data and identity. These are the important constraints which have to be considered and require the need for security. If the privacy factor fails, then this can create risk for the user data when there is an integration with other third party websites. Hence, while practicing security testing it is important for the teams to consider every factor so that the user-data is secured.

Conclusion

Testing banking application can be an intricate process, but if there is an experienced testing partner involved, the testing challenges can be readily eradicated. TestingXperts, with its efficient testing strategies and the right blend of testers and processes, is helping its banking and financial clients to achieve successful and vulnerability-free applications.

The post 12 Challenges Faced While Testing an Banking Application first appeared on TestingXperts.