Digital payment in the banking ecosystem and managing fraud risk

Countries believe there is unfathomable growth of digital payment in the banking  ecosystems. In fact, many countries are including the plan to boost the digital payment ecosystem in their budget report. India, for example, has a plan to offer financial support for the digital payment ecosystem, which is included in the Union Budget 2022-2023. As per a report in Statista, “total transaction value in the Digital Payments segment is projected to reach US$8.50tn in 2022.” The report further highlights that “total transaction value is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2022-2026) of 13.10% resulting in a projected total amount of US$13.91tn by 2026.”

Let us discuss some of the distinct global digital payment features. Digital payment allows instant money transfer between wallets and different bank accounts in seconds. It helps in easy bill payments, both prepaid and post-paid. Users can also manage physical and virtual card operations without any issues. Digital payment services help in easy merchant payments using contactless technologies like (NFC codes and QR code scanners). Digital payment platform uses multiple technologies like tokenization, passwords, biometrics, security questions, point-to-point encryption, out-of-band authentication, and one-time password (OTP) via SMS to protect digital transactions. A lot is happening in the digital payment platform, which requires strict attention to follow the security guidelines.

Background of digital payment

Organizations have seen the challenges associated with maintaining the platform security for the digital payment platform. The scope of digital payment is not the same as it was in the mid-1990s when Stanford Federal Credit Union offered the first online payment systems to clients as a first organization. Today, digital payment systems provide services in various fields. From money transfer to bill payment and loan origination, the digital payment platform handles multiple services.

Millicent and Ecash were the first companies to launch digital payment in 1995 and 1996, respectively. They specialize in digital cash, e-money, and tokens modes of digital payments. The emergence of PayPal in 1998 changed the digital payment trend completely.

Digital payment in the banking ecosystem

The massive technological development in today’s era has led to the growth in online shopping, banking, and other services. The digital payment structure has seen significant expansion in the past few years, and it is further accelerated with mobile devices. As per a report in Statista, 950 million users carried out mobile payment transactions globally in 2019. And the projection says there will be a whopping growth of 1.31 billion users by 2023. Amidst all these growth and developments, the organizations have much to worry about the platform security, performance, functionality, accessibility, and usability. Organizations must establish a strong foundation and control over the digital payment platform if they have to manage the unrelenting growth of digital payment.

To initiate and encourage the growth of digital payment, banks are embedding futuristic technologies like AI, Machine Learning, IoT, and Robotics with their products and solutions. Digital and contactless payment have increased in the recent past. Not just in the major cities, the smaller cities are also adopting contactless payments. Users can carry out transactions by simply scanning the QR codes or in a single swipe.

Banks are collaborating with multiple digital payment platforms and third-party platforms to extend their services beyond the conventional banking systems. The tap-and-go payment options have enabled many vendors and retailers to embed the advanced technology into wearable devices that allow consumers to purchase products and services using smartwatches, smart rings, and wristbands. The only concern is how secure these devices are. To put all speculations to rest, retailers and vendors are doing enough to ensure the platform’s security by eliminating anomalies and errors from the payment platforms.

There is an increase in e-commerce transactions. Restrictions on movement during the Covid-19 lockdown could be one of the reasons but are not the only one. Banks have made their services available to the customers on digital platforms before Covid-19. But we cannot take away the fact Covid-19 has fast-tracked the process, and whatever was brewing beneath the surface has emerged strongly. Digitalization has changed the payment structure. E-commerce sites today have access to the user’s bank accounts. Banks are also collaborating with e-commerce sites to provide exclusive offers to consumers. The process has influenced people to rely on e-commerce to purchase groceries, health products and other essentials. The offers from banks and the benefits and advantages of these transactions have surpassed conventional buying and selling behavior. Hence consumers prefer to shop online and access remote commerce and digital payments.

Customers have payment flexibility using QR codes. It is easy to implement and use. The banks have integrated the services and made them available to their customers. QR codes carry transaction processes without any hassles saving significant time. Investment banks are adopting cryptocurrency to help people inspire to invest in digital gold. The financial market has seen a prominent surge in crypto investment, and it is evident that cryptocurrency is here to stay.

Fraud risk in digital payment

The growth of digital payment attracts multiple fraud risks as hackers are trying to gain access to customers’ personal and banking details. Following are the types of fraud risks that banks and customers are facing on a regular basis.

  1. Phishing – The scammers create identical bank website and send the links to the customers. The fake websites are used to capture user ID and passwords, Card numbers, ATM PIN, CVV, and OTP and misuse them.
  2. Vishing – It is a simple method where scammers use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to contact customers and seek personal and financial details over the phone.
  3. Smishing – Using this method scammers send text messages to the customers with links to call back, visit websites, download documents, and information about job offers, lottery wins, ATM deactivated and more.
  4. Identity Theft – Scammers use different methods to acquire customer personal information date of birth, passport number, Aadhaar details, PAN details and more to access customer bank accounts and carry out transactions.
  5. Sim Swap Fraud – The scammers obtain customers’ detail through phone calls, messages, and more and get a new Sim card issued in customers’ names to carry out illegal transactions.
  6. Social Engineering Fraud – The scammers update fake number that resembles bank toll-free number on various digital platforms or caller identification apps to deceive customers. 
  7. International Transfer Scams – The scammers create fake stories and trap customers to share their personal and bank details. They use this information to withdraw a large sum of amount from customers’ bank accounts.
  8. Money Mule – This method is used to entice customers with attractive commissions. Once customers share their bank account details and personal information, the amount which is already stolen from one account to transferred to the customers’ account.  
  9. Juice Jacking – The scammers install the malware in public charging ports. If the customers do not have their own charging device and they happen to charge their mobile devices in any of the public charging ports, scammers can get easy access to the customers’ details stored in the mobile phones.
  10. Cerberus Trojan Threat – It is malware that steals customers’ banking details like credit card numbers, CVV and more. Cerberus efficiently captures screenshots, and get easy access to SMS text, contact lists, account credentials, and more.
  11. Covid-19 Phishing Threat – Covid-19 has been used by many scammers as an opportunity to steal and manipulate customers’ personal data and financial details bank account and debit/credit card details, CVV numbers and secret passwords to gain access to customers’ bank accounts.
  12. IDN Homograph Attack – The scammers can create and use a domain or website name that resembles an established name to trick the customers.
  13. Loan Fraud – The scammers trick the customers by publishing fake advertisements for quick and easy loans and offer them low-interest rates, easy repayment, or without any security needs.
  14. Online scams through the classified marketplace – The scammers create a fake profiles with fake social media addresses to contact customers who post their advertisements. They trick the customers to share their personal and financial details.
  15. Aadhar-based Payment System Fraud – The scammers can use the gums and glues to replicate customers’ fingerprints and use them to carry out transactions.
  16. Broadband Internet Security Fraud – The scammers may call customers to pretend that they are calling from telecommunication or internet services companies and ask for customers’ banking and personal details.
  17. SMS Spoofing – The scammers may call or text customers informing them about the KYC process being incomplete, debit and credit card being blocked or expired, SIM cards expired, accounts credited with a significant and more.

Managing fraud risk

The digital payment platforms need a high fraud detection mechanism. It is critical to have security measures, but it is also crucial to ensure the platform is functioning without any errors. Digital payment platforms must adopt a few security measures to establish a secure connection in a high-speed transaction process. Every secure website must have SSL certificates as it creates a foundation of trust. HTTPS is safe compared to HTTP as it avoids redirection links. It requires a digital certificate to establish the website as safe and secured, and HTTPS websites have security certificates.

The digital era is all about real-time payments, and the digital payment platform is driven by technology. Considering the amount of fraud in digital payment, fraud checks, authentication, authorizations, and data analysis must happen simultaneously. Banks are improving the API ecosystems to integrate their services into the third-party platform and make them available to the customers. As in the real-time payment, the sender and the receiver send and receive the amount at the same time; it is crucial to have the notification and alert of all transactions in place to limit the chances of data manipulations.

The digital payment platform is customer-centric; hence it must be customer friendly. Customers would not want to be pinned by unnecessary compliance requirements. But digital payment platforms cannot be open to cyber threats. Hence, the platform must follow the necessary security guidelines without overdoing them. In today’s world, digital payment platform follows blockchain technologies and are visible to the customer. This technology helps in detecting illegal transactions and malicious user behavior. Organizations are investing in technologies to tighten security knots and prevent monetary losses. Companies would not compromise on external and internal security.

As important as it is to maintain the security of the digital payment platform, it is also critical to test the platform end-to-end for seamless functionalities and error-free performance. Without an adequate testing solution, the platform would miss out on important alerts.

Conclusion

It is crucial to create a tenable cybersecurity framework and it is also important to ensure the integration, performance, accessibility, and usability of this framework. Organizations must adapt to digital channels and platforms to retain their customers. Digitalization is making it easier for organizations to acquire customers and serve them digitally. Accessing funds and payments is becoming more convenient.

The organizations need support to promote and build products with the right features and capabilities. The banks see growth in their ROI when the people use these digital platforms. Organizations would witness a significant cost reduction in delivery when people use the platform for many years. Digital payment testing is a method to validate the platforms’ sustainability and tenacity for long years.

User experience is the most vital point as the users’ attention span is less, and any unsatisfactory designs would bring down their interest leading to the lowering of companies’ investments. The usability and accessibility of the digital platforms are the parts that the organizations must focus on. Testing the platform ensures customer experience with the UI design, platform usability, and accessibility. We have seen clients coming back with requests to understand if their application performances are consistent across multiple devices and operating systems. As banks are slowly moving to multi-channel from mono-channel, which means that banks are interacting with their customers and offering services on multiple channels. Hence, integration, performance, functionality, and security are the most essential areas that require adequate validation.

There is a significant growth in API channels as in Yethi, we have witnessed several instances where banks had requested upward of a thousand APIs to their partner networks. Our partners have contacted us to build an infrastructure that could validate the APIs. The CIOs may face challenges if somebody releases a patch set in a multiple-interconnected network, which could lead to disruption of ongoing processes. The banks need to ensure their reputation as any of these instances could cause heavy damage to their business flow.

Test Automation and Monitoring: The Key to Building Consumer Trust

The key to building a successful business is meeting consumer requirements and gaining trust. There is no place for error in the modern competitive digital landscape, or even if there are, consumers expect them to be resolved at a bullet speed. Businesses must sustain their status quo with massive expansion in the economic landscape. Whether normal circumstances or difficult scenarios, customer relies on organizations to manage their transactions and data.

Let us consider the financial and banking sector for instance: as they thrive highly on customer reputation. Many banks and financial institutions have faced the consequences of going wrong with their digital services and platform. In fact, a research paper from 2017 titled Banking System Trust, Bank Trust and Bank Loyalty highlights that the implications of losing trust in banks are significant. This paper also highlights the six determinants like competence, stability, integrity, customer orientation, transparency, and value congruence as the catalyst to restoring consumer trust and loyalty towards the services that banks offer.

Consumers’ behavior changes towards banking services when they are confident about the brand and services. Trust is the most critical factor in a consumer-bank relationship. Consumers want the BFSI sector to be dependable, transparent, and approachable. To minimize the negative impact on consumers, banks must re-establish themselves as trusted advisors and providers of assistance. But it is not just the word of mouth that is impactful; it must be backed up with services that include manual assistance and system responses. Banks and financial institutions are adopting automation testing and continuous monitoring of systems to ensure bank representatives offer their services quickly, efficiently, and effectively.

Why Test Automation?

Banking has always thrived on customer loyalty and in-person interactions. Its transition to the digital realm will benefit consumers and financial institutions.

Waiting in lines for banking hours and squandering Saturdays going in and out of banks are now a matter of the past. Digital banking allows you to access your bank accounts quickly and easily from any location using your smartphone. Banks are spending less on infrastructure and saving their operating costs with digital banking.

With the advent of digitalization, banks must focus on delivering a positive customer experience at every touchpoint. A robust testing framework is vital for delivering a superior customer experience. Test automation is critical to the success of digital testing projects.

Consistent integrations, set up with automated tests and continuous monitoring, can substantially reduce the testing life cycle. These test automation strategies are required for banking institutions to successfully navigate the digital upheavals.

Through rigorous automated testing of a banking software program, a financial organization can ensure:

  • Accurate execution of activities while effectively shielding the personal data of clients
  • Following all financial guidelines strictly
  • Enforcement of all legal norms and guidelines
  • Effective transaction management without disruptions, especially during peak hours
  • Preventing fraud and cyber-attacks, making the banking application safe to use

Test automation indeed reduces time in the testing lifecycle phase, but test execution has two critical steps; one of those steps is test monitoring. Test monitoring helps evaluate all testing activities and efforts. Continuous test monitoring tracks the ongoing process and testing metrics, assessing future actions based on test data and highlighting the feedback based on the progress of the testing process to the concerned team and the shareholder. Test monitoring validates if the test process produces the desired result. Let us explore the effects of test automation and monitoring over banking and financial platforms in the light of the six determinants of ensuring consumer trust and loyalty.

  • Competence – Test automation and monitoring evaluates system competency to offer high quality service and response to the customer request.
  • Integrity – Test automation and monitoring ensures system performances as intended to function without any disruption.
  • Customer orientation – Test automation and monitoring prepares your systems to address customers’ needs.
  • Transparency – Test automation and monitoring allows companies to maintain a transparency of the transactions and trades.
  • Stability – Test automation and monitoring ensures system stability and performance even during high traffic or during unforeseen events of performance failure.
  • Value congruence – With test automation and test monitoring companies prepares systems to exhibit positive work outcomes. It ensures direct, positive effects on customer satisfaction, trust, affective commitment, and customer loyalty.

Improving quality with robust testing to build consumer trust

Through effective automated tests and continuous monitoring strategies, you can improve the reliability of your core banking systems and can significantly reduce costs.

1.        Automated tests save time and money

Software tests are repeated several times during development cycles for quality enhancement. It is conducted every time a source code is altered or modified on every hardware configuration and operating system. Manually repeating these tests can be highly time-consuming and expensive.

Automated tests are convenient in such circumstances because they may be run repeatedly without incurring additional costs. Automated tests can take hours instead of days to complete these repetitive checks, providing customers with qualitative service whenever they want. It is a time-saving benefit that also saves money for banks.

2.       Increase in test coverage

Continuous monitoring, backed by automated testing, leads to an expansion of the scope of the tests, which improves the software program’s quality. Lengthy tests, which are frequently avoided during manual testing, can be efficiently conducted via automated testing.

The tests can successfully run on multiple computers at the same time with distinct configurations. The performance and quality of banking software can be tested through automated tests that display data tables, memory contents, status of the internal program, file contents, and so on. By executing numerous complex tests throughout the test runs, automated tests can expand coverage in a manner that manual testing cannot.

3.       Improvement in testing accuracy

Even the most skilled testers can make mistakes while performing manual testing. The use of automation testing, however, results in identical procedures being performed in a precise manner and the results being recorded in extensive detail. This leads to improved banking software providing customers with better service.

4.       Avoid errors of manual testing

Automated testing can simulate numerous concurrent digital users interacting with web, software, and network applications. Customers benefit from this by being able to use the banking software for their needs in a hassle-free manner with minimal to no delays caused by network issues or internal errors.

5.       Boon for testers and developers

Automation tests provide several capabilities that help developers and testers save time. Developers can quickly identify troublesome areas of software through automation tests and focus on resolving the issues. Automated tests can run by themselves every time the source code is modified, and they can notify the team in case of failure.  With the additional time, developers may concentrate on creating more specialized software to improve the customer experience.

6.       Improved morale of the development and QA team

Manually performing repetitive testing tasks can take much time and get monotonous for testers and developers, limiting their creativity. Automation testing frees up time for the development and QA teams to work on more challenging and profitable projects. This boosts the team’s morale and confidence, which favours the organization.

Conclusion

The digital era has inextricably linked banking and test automation. The automation of the BFSI sector, which involves RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and RTA (Robotic Test Automation), AI (Artificial Intelligence), Traditional Automation, and so on, has led to the development of an efficient and sustainable economy. Automation tests generate standardized audit trails, allowing financial institutions to adhere to industry standards while incurring minimum expenses.

Test Automation in banking is relevant to address today’s needs for high-quality customer experiences and agility. Excellence in test automation is essential to encourage continuous innovations and speedy rollouts of new banking services and products to customers. Banks are quickly rising to the challenge and implementing automated testing programs to save time, increase employee productivity, and enhance customer experiences while fostering trust and loyalty.

Yethi blends the testing services and test automation solutions to help the banks and financial institutions on their digital transformation journey. We focus on improving the quality and efficiency of the organization’s core software system. We are a niche QA service provider helping several global banking/financial organizations increase the agility, consistency, and accuracy of the platform.

With our efficient codeless test automation solution, Tenjin, we have taken the test automation to the next level with an accuracy rate of nearly 100%. It is a revolutionary solution, which is easy to integrate and rapidly scan through the software and detect errors. Its intuitive features empower banking and financial solutions to work 3x times faster than any other automated testing system, while the simple plug-in and play design enables easy integration. Tenjin is developed with a focus on continuously helping banks and financial institutions across the globe to build a robust and resilient testing process.

Test Automation for Building Reliable Banking Systems

Banking systems are far more developed with the latest technologies. Especially during the last decade, technological advancements have changed how we transact and interact with banks and financial institutions. Technology improvisation is not expected to end; with every passing day and year, it is now an essential aspect of our financial dealings.

By integrating banking transactions through mobile phones using UPI and NEFT payments, banking has moved another step towards digital advancement. While many third-party apps can connect to a bank account and make payments, some banking apps allow users to check the status of their cheques and card applications.

Digital transformation in banking is a matter of patience and caution. A mistake made in an online eight-ball game will not cause much damage, but software cannot be trusted with people’s money. Anything that goes wrong with transactions will directly be the bank’s fault, which can be detrimental for businesses.

Every software bundle that a financial institution releases must undergo a thorough testing process to ensure nothing goes wrong. In a growing business, software testing cannot wait for long days of testing or be prone to human errors. Therefore, banks and financial institutions are adopting codeless test automation. Test automation saves time, money, and effort, while codeless reduces human errors in the applications.

What is test automation and how can it help the banking sector?

Whenever organizations develop software, they do not directly release the initial version to the market. At least, strictly, not in the case of banking systems. The one place where you don’t want loopholes is in the software that connects to banking and financial archives.

The way financial institutions offer services has changed. With digitalization, financial services are more advanced. From how you avail services and access data to record transactions, everything must proceed with uniform speed while maintaining the quality of financial software and expenses. A financial sector is a place with humongous amounts of public data under a confidentiality contract, which means that if a bug in service causes loss of money, the bank can be defamed and sued.

Organizations must ensure that the applications offer outstanding customer experiences with real-time data. Real-time data must be safe and accessible to the customers to ensure complete customer satisfaction. This very reason creates a need for testing banking or financial software. Until codeless test automation came into the picture, the testing of such software was done by human eyes and brains, which were susceptible to many errors due to long test lines for running the whole testing program.

With maturity in machine learning, the linguistics of machines are now used to create a precise testing platform that allows faster, much more efficient testing of software and privatised control of the whole process.

How does Codeless test automation help financial institutions?

Codeless test automation is necessary for most core banking processes like loan origination. Loan origination and trading are some of the most affected areas of the industry. Such core banking operations require faster software development and a stable system to handle a plethora of tasks, all at once. In a world where a single rating on the Play Store matters, a few unsatisfied users might create a bad image with negative reviews. To understand why the financial service industry requires end-to-end codeless test automation, we need to know the requirements of financial software:

  • The application must be multi-utility and flexible to handle several multi-tier user requests at any given point in time.
  • The app must safely integrate with third-party apps on a large scale.
  • The app must deploy secure transactions with end-to-end data encryption.
  • The servers of the application must be secured enough to keep personal information hidden.
  • The application must be synced in real-time with the archives to make quick transactions.
  • The software must be stable enough to perform several transactions within a short time duration.
  • The app must record every detail from all transactions and store them securely on the user’s device or cloud.
  • The software must be able to troubleshoot queries raised by the customers.
  • The app must have a fail-safe system to protect the users from emergencies like device theft or data attacks.

Here are some of the core banking segments that require codeless test automation:

●       Trading

The world of Wall Street and many forexes rely on secure, real-time data and money transfers because people’s hard-earned money is at stake. In such a complex game of numbers and sales, a minor glitch in the system or algorithm would cause chaos for thousands. Codeless test automation makes sure that the software is tested in the most complex of conditions to make it fail-safe.

●       Digital banking

Banks have come a long way from transfer and withdrawal slips. Payments are being made on phones using QR codes, and business is being conducted on current digital accounts—that too with a bank with no branches. When an entire bank promises core banking from anywhere and everywhere, the whole banking framework depends on the software. With codeless tests, banking automation can turn branches and passbooks obsolete.

●       Loan origination

The entire process of loan origination, from the applicant to the lender to the credit score calculators and back to the applicant, is a long, complex operation. The credit market is the most fluctuating market and needs secure and accurate data for confirmation. Loan origination can benefit from proper assessment and credibility of the applicant, enhancing the user experience on both sides. With codeless test automation, the application becomes error-free and helps make accurate lending decisions for financial institutions.

Choosing the right framework

As a financial institution, the software you introduce cannot be open ware. A banking institution is mandated to hide its clients’ crucial and private data. With codeless test automation, the control of the software while it is connected to a network shall be in safe hands. You can choose what functions need to be automated and which ones are to be kept on hold. For testing such software, the testing framework needs to be hybrid or library-based, so it can be customised frequently with changing data-sharing norms.

Conclusion

Codeless test automation can help transform the banking sector by creating reliable banking systems that have become the need of the hour. Most of the banking processes can be streamlined to provide improved services and better customer satisfaction, leading to the overall growth of the sector.

At Yethi, we focus on improving the efficiency of the organization’s core software system. Being a niche QA service provider, we have helped and are helping several global banking/financial organizations increase the agility, consistency, and accuracy of their platform. With our efficient test automation solution.

Tenjin is an easy-to-integrate, codeless automation platform. This revolutionary solution has taken the test automation to next level with an accuracy rate of nearly 100%. It is designed to rapidly scan through the software and detect errors. This innovative platform works 3x times faster than any other automated testing system, while the simple plug-in and play design enable easy integration. Tenjin is developed with a focus on continuously helping banks and financial institutions across the globe to build a robust and resilient testing process.

Risk-based testing for bug prevention to bug detection

The primary intent of conducting software testing is to uncover the bugs, assess them, and identify the associated risks. This approach will enhance the software cycle-over-cycle, mitigate risk, and allow smooth business operations to reflect an improved business revenue.

The testing volume increases faster than deploying the new functionalities. There is no need to test the old capabilities frequently to ensure that the new functionality doesn’t create any discrepancy in the system. Also, various stakeholders might have a different view of “risks” than developers or testers (not just probability of failure, but impact); hence, it becomes critical to carry out risk-based testing for bug prevention and detection.

Risk-based approach helps,

  • Identify high-risk areas
  • Direct testing efforts
  • Early detection for high-risk failures
  • Lower regression errors (no degradation in functionality that was working)

Testing of pre- and post-development codes help in identifying and resolving the bugs in the system; thereby, it will help mitigate risks quickly and efficiently. It is to be noted that risk-based testing is not limited to bug prevention and detection alone. After the complete code of the software is written, the testing experts can also identify issues based on their expertise, knowledge, and experience when the software is in the development or designing phase. However, no software should go without risk-based testing in the deployment phase, as it can cause technical issues or corrupt the database and applications.

Difference between Bug Prevention and Bug Detection

Bug prevention and bug detection in software are two different constraints with regards to the aspects of before the code is written and after the code is written, respectively. Bug prevention is the practice of discovering issues before the coding for any software is completed. With bug prevention, concerned individuals can rethink the design so that the code possesses the ability of risk mitigation.

On the other hand, bug detection is the practice of uncovering unknown risks during and after the code is written concerning the impact of other distinct constraints on code. Through bug detection, coding teams can make changes in real-time to enhance the scope of software utilization and avoid any probability of encountering issues.

Concept of Risk-Based Testing – bug prevention and detection

Risk-Based Testing can be explained as a basis of prioritization of the test cases that are to be conducted on software. By documenting the significance of function, its likelihood of failure and impact in case of failure, testers can focus their efforts on areas that can have a significant negative impact.

The process of bug detection comprises analysis, prevention, and management, which will ensure that all the bugs and defects are identified and resolved before the software reaches the final users and prevent it from causing any issues in their system.

Further, bug/defect analysis, prevention, and management practices ensure that all the bugs/defects go through a pre-determined life cycle to be fixed and closed. The nature of the bug depends upon the resources it uses, and the effects cause the software to behave abnormally. The goal of bug analysis, prevention, and management practices is to identify the root cause and treat them. 

The root cause of the bug occurrence generally contributes to the factor of the bug. It needs to be mitigated and resolved to eliminate all the probability of recurrence of the concerning defect. However, the coding team needs to make sure the elimination of root causes should be affecting the performance of the software in any way.

The bug prevention and detection in the risk-based testing process concern the risk containment and mitigation aspects for the risk management process. The risk management process ensures that software is prepared to mitigate the risk whenever it arises during the risk-based testing process. It is based on predetermined programming that can minimize the adverse impact.

Risk Monitoring and Controlling

Risk monitoring and controlling is the process of tracking all the identified risks, such as monitoring residual risks, detecting the new ones, assuring risk plan execution, and evaluating the software ability and effectiveness to eliminate the risks. The risk monitoring and controlling process works throughout the software development life cycle by recording the risk metrics related to the implementation of contingency plans.

While carrying out risk-based testing, 75% of risks arising in test cases can be monitored and controlled, whereas 25% of risks in the test cases may remain undetected due to lack of exposure to application functionalities. Risk monitoring and controlling is a continuous process as new risks may arise by adding new functionalities in the ongoing software development lifecycle. An efficient risk monitoring and control process aims at providing necessary support. It ensures that all risk-based testing practices and robust communication are adapted for making effective decisions to mitigate risks proactively.

Overall, it can be stated that risk-based testing and its varied practices and processes ensure that software is deployed for use by the final users without any bugs or defects. Risk-based testing carries out the practices for bug prevention, bug detection, defect analysis, defect prevention, and defect management for eliminating every possibility of software misbehavior at the user’s end.

Risk-based testing also documents every risk and its triggers so that a risk mitigation plan can be executed as soon as any risk occurs, or trigger is activated. Risk-based testing works in real-time as it starts with the planning phase of software and ends when software is deemed ready for deployment after all the testing. Real-time working of risk-based testing ensures that all the bugs and defects are eliminated from the root causes before they adversely affect the performance of the software at the users’ end.

Yethi is your go-to all your software QA needs

Even a minor bug can adversely affect the software quality putting the brand reputation at stake. An excellent testing process can improve the quality of the software. At Yethi, we follow a process of risk categorization and prioritization. We offer automated business process simulation for high-risk areas to increase the efficiency, accuracy, and consistency of the banking/financial software.

We select test scenarios based on importance to customer & security, financial impact, the complexity of business logic, and integration points. Being a leading QA partner for banks and financial institutions, we have touched base in over 22 countries offering QA solutions for more than 80 clients worldwide.

Yethi’s test automation platform, Tenjin, is a 5th generation robotic platform that can efficiently carry out even the complex testing process with ease. It handles test execution, test management, and defect management at various stages to ensure accurate test results with excellent performance without compromising the critical aspects.

How does test automation vary between development and acceptance in BFSI industry?

Test automation has transformed the core software system of organizations with a better and smarter workflow approach. The improved test automation helps to optimize the entire process, thereby, eliminating any operational gaps and offering a greater level of customer satisfaction. Test automation plays an integral part in the highly complex banking and financial sector where the process involves extremely sensitive financial data, which offers NO scope for compromise. Being popularly used in banks and financial institutions, test automation helps to reduce time and effort on repetitive jobs and increases the speed of delivery multiple folds when compared to manual testing.

Though test automation has eased the tedious and time-consuming manual software testing, its success depends only on the efficiency of automation tools being used. Adding to the sensitive data-driven and multi-layer workflow of the banking and financial sector, a perfect automation tool is required that will align with the organization’s core software system and deliver favorable outcomes. The test automation requirement varies between the development and acceptance phase in the BFSI industry, let’s discuss it in detail.

Test automation in the software development cycle

Testing in the development phase involves a series of to-and-fro cycles to ensure that the newly developed software is working without any defect. The entire cycle of software development or sub-development phase requires a specifically designed test automation tool to get the software immaculately working. Further, with the introduction of more agile DevOps processes, testing is carried out earlier in the development cycle to ensure the developed software is of higher quality. Additionally, continuous testing process is also introduced to execute the automated tests as a part of the software development pipeline to increase quality and reduce business risks.

Software development cycles in the banking processes involve critical data such as an individual’s financial information, transaction history, and personal details. To safeguard the crucial client data and have a fully functional yet completely secured banking software, it is important to have a strong testing procedure in place.

A performance failure, security breach, or a poorly functioning system will lead to loss of potential and prospective clients, eventually incurring a huge financial loss. Organizations need to understand that it’s equally important to invest in high-quality, fully functional test automation tools to give the best service to their clients.

In this era of growing dependency on digital platforms, only a good testing system has the power to make or break your business. Poorly performing testing systems can compromise on the performance and security, leading to highly dissatisfied customers, which can eventually shatter the brand within no time. That’s why, we at Yethi, have introduced an efficient test automation platform for banking and financial businesses to work at their best while offering complete peace of mind to the entire client base. Tenjin, Yethi’s codeless automation tool, has revolutionized test automation in the banking and financial sectors, offering an impeccable system that offers no scope for errors.

Yethi has established itself as a market leader in QA services to the BFSI industry by offering testing solutions to popular banking software including Oracle FLEXCUBE, Infosys Finacle, and TCS BaNCS. Tenjin has created a deep impression in the market for its quick deployment test automation solution that conducts the testing without the need for scripts or codes while offering nearly 100% accuracy.

Test automation for software acceptance

Banking and financial systems are constantly modifying their core software to add new features or upgrade the existing ones to meet the ever-changing demand of the customers. Testing associated with the adding of a new feature to cater to the company/institution’s requirement is defined as acceptance testing.

User acceptance testing forms a vital part of the software development life cycle as it is tested for real-world usage for the intended audience. Otherwise known as UAT (user acceptance testing), it is done when the software has undergone integration testing, unit testing, system testing, and other functional testing aspects. This testing is the final stage of functional testing to check if the final results are accepted by the end-users.

To ease the acceptance testing from a manual approach, test automation tools for acceptance are being used popularly by banks and other financial companies/ institutions. Manual test execution takes time as the test codes are manually written and reviewed by the testers. Such an approach is not suitable for a highly agile working system that is followed by companies today. To keep up with the trend and offer modern solutions to new-age problems, Yethi offers automation for acceptance testing.

At Yethi, we understand how essential it is to decide and use the right automation tool for testing user acceptance of the banking/ financial software. Yethi’s test automation tool, Tenjin, is a codeless platform that is designed to rapidly scan through the software and detect any defects. It improves the application quality by fully investigating the formal expression of your business needs and addressing any operational and infrastructural gaps. Tenjin is one of its kind of tools that can offer testing of banking/financial software with minimal human interference and nearly 100% accuracy.

The future of test automation in banking/ financial software

The next wave of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning is already taking over all the technological processes across various industries. The incorporation of these technologies has been a crucial part of the banks and financial companies/ institutions, as the number of account holders is constantly increasing. It becomes important for the banks to consider the need of the current tech-savvy millennials while keeping things simple for the previous generation.

Banks and other financial companies are creating and updating software for online, mobile, and other digital platforms. This increasing number of online users has created a need for an immensely effective software testing solution that will leave no scope for compromise in any aspects of functional usage, performance, or security.

The future of test automation in the BFSI industry looks quite promising with the growing usage of digital platforms. The sector has already seen the integration of AI, machine learning, and robotics; however, the future looks different with advanced robotics, augmented reality, and smart machines being used in a common, real-life scenario. The evolving banking/ financial process will further require an advanced testing solution. The future might see robots take over the testing process or a more agile process might come into the picture that might offer impeccable execution. Technology is evolving at a faster rate than we can imagine, so the future will see advancements much beyond our current understanding.

Cards for corporates: Are banks doing enough to innovate? Why user experience is still nascent?

Globalization is rapidly increasing and connecting the world economies as one. This growth has led to an increase in global business travelers like never before. To ease the expense management for companies and add convenience to the business travelers, corporate cards were introduced. Employees no longer have to spend out of their pockets for official expenses and wait endlessly for reimbursement. Corporate cards offer the freedom to handle authorized business expenses and allow employees to deal with official expenditures directly from the company’s account.

For corporate cards to work effectively, it requires a strong testing process to support the software development activity. Since the process involves sensitive data like money, card number, customer details, and company details, there is no scope for compromise on the quality of testing. Card testing is a critical process that needs to be carried out accurately and securely while maintaining all compliances.

Are banks doing enough to innovate the card payments?

Banks have seen a transformative change in terms of card innovation. The increasing competition between fintechs and other financial institutions have led to innovation in the banking sector. This came as a plan to attract new customers and retain the existing ones.

The payments are getting more flexible, encrypted, regulated, and secured which is making them increasingly ubiquitous and transforming the customer experience. The trend of payments is moving towards real-time transactions and utilizing advanced technologies like Cloud, AI, ML, and digital payments.

The recent innovations in banking/ finance:

  • Emphasis on digital approach
  • Supporting e-channels, e-wallets, and third-party providers
  • Real-time payment options
  • Geography-specific needs catered
  • World language supported
  • AI and machine learning integrated transformations
  • Approach to embrace the flexible Fintech business models

Even with the growing innovation, some unaddressed challenges by the banks/ financial institutions hinder their growth; they include:

  • Increasing competition by the fintech companies
  • Investigate peer-to-peer lending option
  • Noncard lending options
  • Unmet consumer demands
  • Lack of personalization in customer engagement
  • Slower adoption of new technology

The banking process aims to streamline and address all the challenges that lie ahead of a better user experience.

Why user experience is still nascent?

Today’s disruptive technology has made enormous changes in the way we use cards. Cards have evolved over the years; started with introduction of money withdrawal at the ATMs, swiping at merchant machines, and using it for online payments. Further, the introduction of corporate credit cards had been a big hit, offering ease of expense management among the companies.

Even with the greater options and flexibility the corporate cards offer, user experience still remains nascent. The reason user experience has not seen a steep growth is due to the lack of brand awareness, not meeting the customer demands, and not using cutting-edge technology.

Scope for improvements in corporate cards

  • Corporate cards are primarily used by companies for expense management, but it is important for the employees also to keep a track of their expenditure and check if they are spending within the specified limit. Such tracking needs a real-time, efficient app that works flawlessly to update the debits instantly, send notifications, and track the daily/weekly/monthly expenses. The user experience can, further, be enhanced with a responsive user design and efficient navigation system.

  • A greater customer experience can be achieved with an omnichannel transaction solution. Omnichannel payments refer to the mode of payments in multiple ways; for example, making payment using phone, web, merchant machine, or third-party payment apps. Though there has been a significant growth in providing omnichannel payments, there is a need to expand the payment options for the corporate cards to offer great convenience to the users.

  • To offer a great experience for card users, it is essential to incorporate the right UI UX practices. Only a responsive design and seamless user experience will keep the users happy and eventually help to retain them.

  • Credit card budgeting tools are perfect for tracking expenses. These tools connect with the financial accounts and tracks the transaction through an app. Emphasis should be made on creating credit card budgeting tools with great design and seamless user experience.

Why is card testing critical? What are the parameters involved?

The success of a corporate credit card lies in the accurate credit card testing process conducted during and after the development process. Without proper testing, the process would be chaotic providing inconvenience to the employees and incurring a huge loss to the company. The testing of cards involves various important steps to ensure that it works even under high loads without performance failure.

Key points involved in card testing:

  • The card should be tested to offer flexibility to work online as well as offline
  • Card testing ensures that the card works efficiently with the sales machine even during the offline payment
  • The testing should ensure that the payments are done instantly
  • It should effortlessly pass the payment confirmation message testing
  • Testing to check if the funds are properly received in the merchant account
  • Card testing must ensure that the payment confirmation is received
  • Testing should make sure that the payments are encrypted and secured

Corporate cards are evolving and transforming business objectives while offering better security and simplifying the payment options. Furthermore, the rewards, deals, and perks offered by the card companies are initiatives to attract more business owners, making it benefit mutually.

Since the process involves sensitive data like money, card number, customer details, and company details, the critical development process of card software need a well-planned, accurate, secure, and strong software testing process.

Why Yethi for credit card testing?

Credit card testing is an elaborate process involving functionality validation, functionality testing, non-functional testing, testing the performance, testing the changes and configuration, and reviewing the test reports. Yethi’s 300+ domain specialists have developed test strategy and business scenario/ test case review for corporate credit cards, for the esteemed clients.

Yethi is a niche QA servicer provider for global banking and financial companies. Yethi’s flagship product, Tenjin, is diminishing the operational gaps across key business areas of the BFSI industry. This simple plug-in platform is process-driven and offers seamless end-to-end testing. It delivers better software performing at a faster rate with nearly 100% accuracy. Our half-a-million test case repository for card testing comprises end-to-end test case scenarios for credit card payment through POS application and test the important details of cards like card number, expiry date, CVV number, AVS code, encryption, authorization, and settlement, and more helping you to fast track your product within your budget constraint.