10 Important Aspects to Consider While Testing Mobile Banking and Internet Banking Platforms

Mobile banking and Internet Banking platforms

Testing mobile and internet banking platforms are essential in the current banking landscape. Customers no longer wish to continue with brick-and-mortar banking. They avoid visiting banks and standing in long queues as they know that the banks will meet their requirements even from a remote location. This daily dealing and transactions are now pushed to an extreme, where banking seems impossible without mobile platforms. Of course, inadequate performances of mobile banking have various consequences, and there is no room for pondering whether the mobile and internet banking platforms need testing. The answer to the question will always be a big “YES”.

Indian millennials totalling 440 million, compose 46% of the workforce and contribute 70% of the household income. An average millennial checks his smartphone once every 15 minutes. Digitisation has made it easier for millennials and other banking customers to access their banking accounts 24/7 without waiting in long queues. Mobile banking and internet banking have reduced the cost of banking and streamlined processes to deliver more value to customers. The key to gaining a competitive advantage is customer-centricity in banking applications.

Banking applications and software have complex structures which incorporate a wide range of features and ensure security to all its users, while ensuring a seamless and user-friendly experience. If a banking application is released full of bugs and errors with performance issues, it will damage the credibility of the bank. Banking has essentially become a multichannel provider, and a successful testing strategy is testing cloud, mobile, internet and other aspects of the banking applications to ensure proper performance.

Let’s look at the ten aspects that banking applications (mobile or internet banking) must consider while testing the platform

  • Total coverage of workflow and business requirements
  • The functional aspects of the application
  • The security aspect of the application
  • A fool proof disaster recovery programme to protect users from unfair practices
  • Data Integrity
  • User application, support service sectors and facilitate payments through multiple gateways
  • Integrate well with other apps, including billing apps, credit cards, and trading accounts
  • Fast processing of secured transactions
  • Increased storage capacity of banking apps
  • Be user-friendly, support users across all platforms and on all devices
  • High auditing capability to troubleshoot customer issues

Testing Internet banking platform and mobile banking platform for banking apps

While testing banking applications, one of the important issues to address is data complexity. Banking applications store all sorts of private information, data, passwords, and assets of the customer in the backend. The backend databases should not be affected by malware. Testing ensures that the data is protected. The bank should have an automation tool to check data connectivity continuously. Data connectivity testing is tested over a virtual private network continuously. This will ensure that the private data is safe. The following testing methods are recommended for internet banking and mobile banking platforms:


1) Privacy governance: The most common privacy governance model that is used in data protection is a decentralised model where different business owners within the organisation are responsible for data protection matters within the scope of Indian data protection laws and   requirements, stay compliant and being proactive in solving issues. They should have expert knowledge of the data protection law and its governance and the ability to fulfil the tasks set out in the regulation. There will be various areas such as legal, IT and others involved in this process.


2) Functional testing: The design and configuration of the banking apps have to be perfectly configured. In reality, many banking apps are designed and configured imperfectly.

The testers of the mobile and internet banking platform have to understand that all the modules and the system function as designed by developers while testing the app.


3) Performance Testing: Performance levels consist of infrastructure, backward integration, and connectivity. Performance failures plague both internet and mobile banking. There should be regular administrative oversight of transactions happening during regular interim periods. Load and stress tests should be regularly performed so that transactions have multiple supports at the same time. The performance of the banking app comes under pressure during festival times. User experience is affected when there is a performance failure of the banking app. It could be as simple as cyber/IT failure leading to incorrect balances showing in the customer accounts. This leads to mass panic. The banking app must obviate such potentialities.


4) Integration testing: Users use many different channels and internet connections, and testing should consider the fact that the performance of the banking app in different channels is uniform.  Banking apps should integrate with programs used by customers without difficulty and without creating hurdles and complexities. When different system modules interact on the customer’s mobile banking app, there will be bugs and errors, so the testing teams must be cautious about bugs and incompatibility impairing the performance. Some bugs are detected in the early stages of the software development life cycle. Bugs could be due to a broken database schema or a wrong cache integration. Integration testing is necessary to understand the variations in the developer’s logic against the software requirements. It is also necessary to validate the modules’ interaction with the third-party tools and Application Programming Interface. There is a multiplicity of mobile devices, used by the bank’s customers in the marketplace. The multitude of customer devices using different platforms and networks must be tested. As this is a complex process, the automation must be planned properly.


5) Accessibility testing: Users of mobile apps may suffer from various physical problems which include being partially sighted, being dyslexic, suffering colour blindness, movability issues relating to their fingers, suffering from arthritis or other issues like using a small screen. The mobile app should be user friendly as much as possible. Testing screen readers, analysing colour ratios, html validator, inbuilt accessibility options, WCAG 2.0 checkpoints, site readability and navigation will ensure better accessibility.


6) Usability , Usage and Acceptance testing:  Usability testing must bear in mind the needs and requirements of a different group of customers. The design of the banking app should therefore be simple. It should be tested among different groups of people as not all will have technical skills. The banking app should be user-friendly and easy enough to use so that even the luddite is able to use the banking app easily.
Acceptance testing ensures the mobile apps with their various features are accessible to the end-users and also for business needs. This type of testing could use a black box type of testing of end-users to make the app more user-friendly and accessible to end users.


7) Data Migration testing: This testing checks whether all data has migrated with integrity from the source platform to the destination platform. This is particularly necessary when data is migrated from legacy systems to the newer applications. Testing has to ensure the integrity of migrated data.


8) Security testing: Security testing is one of the most important aspects of testing the banking app. Banking apps are prone to fraud and phishing attacks. Vulnerability scanners and penetration testing can help in this process. Testing procedures must ensure that all international security standards are followed. The privacy governance in mobile banking apps is key as it interfaces with several other third-party applications. Trojan horses could be hidden in free games which can steal the user data. That is why several authentication factors are put in place before a customer can access his mobile banking app. The Operating system and network vary across various user mobile devices. Testing must adhere to all platform, network, and operating system security standards.

Mobiles are susceptible to theft and loss, malware, and malicious applications; there is also a lack of maturity in fraud tools and controls. There are also SMS, fraud, and operating system vulnerabilities. Testing should control these risks and ensure compliance with all security protocols.

9) Regression testing: Most banks are continuously innovating and adding new features to their banking apps. When mobile banking apps are modified, the changes can have unexpected consequences. Regression testing aims at making sure that no bugs or functionality impairments are caused due to such modifications. Regression testing is crucial for banking apps as they enable banking transactions and use the protected private data of customers. Therefore, regression testing of all updates to the mobile banking app is essential.


10) UI/UX testing: In this type of testing the testers must make sure how buttons, fields, toolbars, colours, fonts, and icons respond to the user input. Testers need to make sure that the mobile app, software, or platform responds perfectly to the end-user.

Key Takeaways

Testing mobile and internet banking platforms can be a complex and demanding process but experienced users can employ strategies that can help banks and their clients secure a vulnerability-free mobile app and a user-friendly interface. The mobile banking app and the internet banking app solution provided by the bank should be a secure, user-friendly app which is free of bugs and errors, where the user can navigate between various pages/screens with minimum difficulty and make a seamless 24/7 banking experience a true reality. The importance of the role of testers and other software specialists in transforming this dream into practical reality cannot be understated.

All you want to know about testing Finacle Wealth Management Systems

Finacle wealth management systems

Wealth management is a support advisory service offered to the customer in effectively creating a long-term/lifetime investment plan. The advent of financial technology has been noticed in the Wealth Management also, as a result it has left an immense impact on the service. For the last several years, financial organizations are using multiple technologies like chatbots, artificial intelligence, blockchain, cryptocurrency, neo banks, Robo-advisors, and other digital solutions, to streamline the front-to-back-office operations and enhance the productivity of the advisors to offer outstanding services to the customers. 

Understanding the customer need of the hour, the financial services and solutions providers build a multi-module CRM platform that will not just provide the finest investment advice to the clients but will manage the end-to-end wealth management process. Finacle, being an industry leader, offers a comprehensive financial solution. Finacle’s Wealth Management Systems allows banks to provide new services and products in a time-bound manner besides the traditional banking services. Thus, many banks and financial institutions have opted for Finacle Wealth Management System as their trusted CRM platform to offer efficient services and strengthen their customer portfolios.

The Wealth Management Systems handle a series of workflows like defining financial goals, planning investment, creating & reviewing the portfolio, planning for estate & tax, planning assets strategically, family philanthropy, managing cash, managing & analyzing diversified investment plans, reporting, and more. As the systems are created to streamline all the processes, it requires end-to-end testing with a massive focus on handling risk and compliance and helps in reporting. As stakes are high in managing the portfolios of high-net-worth individuals and retail customers, any inaccuracy can lead to huge losses. Hence, testing the wealth management system becomes an inevitable step to ensuring system performance and protection against massive loss. This article serves as a guide to test wealth management systems.

Reasons for testing Wealth Management Systems

Following are the major reasons why wealth management systems must be tested:

  • Optimization of Customer Experience: Wealth management systems are the backbone of customer wealth creation. Therefore, their accuracy and timely service are important to optimize the customer experience. Acceptance testing can be helpful to ensure that the software meets the expectations of the users.
  • Obtain Understanding of Workflows: Testing helps in obtaining a thorough understanding of the workflows of the organization and assessing whether all the important workflows are operating independently. As banking systems handle innumerable transactions and, therefore, possess multi-layered workflows and are highly complex, understanding the workflow and testing the systems become a necessity. It also assures their security and transparency.
  • Detection and Correction of Performance Issues: Testing will allow the organization to determine major issues and loopholes in performance. This can create major obstacles in the performance of the systems and overall customer experience. After detection, the anomalies can be corrected to obtain desired results.
  • Improves User Retention: System testing helps to know how many users the system can accommodate, and the time taken to perform various functions. This will give a thorough idea of the performance of the system and the user-specific changes that shall be undertaken. This makes the system more user-friendly and helps in overall user retention.

Challenges associated with testing Wealth Management Systems

Following are the major challenges associated with testing wealth management systems:

  • Security Loopholes: Financial data is sensitive and vulnerable. Therefore, security is paramount. There might arise variations in networks and operating systems that can lead to a lapse in security features. Therefore, software testing becomes important to ensure that it adheres to the set security standards across all the networks, operating systems, and platforms.
  • Multiple Devices: Another important challenge that arises in the testing of wealth management systems is their operations on multiple devices. Each device may have separate configurations and installations that directly affect its security levels. For instance, a device operating in one OS may be more secure than the one operating in a different OS. Also, certain devices may have different functionalities and software support that can lead to reduced efficiency.
  • Lack of Knowledge: Testing experts are not necessarily finance experts. While they specialize in software, they may lack knowledge of the finance domain. This can create obstacles during the testing process that should be taken care of. Appropriate coordination between the testing and finance teams can help mitigate this challenge.

Testing Finacle Wealth Management System

Following are the major tests associated with Finacle Wealth Management Systems:

  • UI/UX Testing: A proper UI/UX is essential to ensure that the customers have a smooth experience. UI/UX testing optimizes the overall customer experience and helps organizations adopt a user-friendly approach to designing and maintaining systems.
  • Functional Testing: Here, the systems are tested for their functional designs and specifications. This is to ensure that the specifications as required by the users are satisfied by the systems.
  • Performance Testing: Performance testing is key to ensuring that the system delivers performance up to the benchmark when it comes to responsiveness, sustainability, and stability.
  • Security Testing: Security testing helps identify loopholes in security breaches and mitigate the associated risks. Data handled by wealth management systems are susceptible to manipulation, hence it is essential to ensure the security of the systems and data.
  • Integration Testing: Integration testing is essential to check whether different units and functionalities of the software interact properly. While the units and functionalities are tested separately as well, it is essential to test them in sets to ensure that they work properly when operated together.
  • Data Migration Testing: Technology keeps on evolving, and therefore, it becomes important to optimize the existing systems or create new ones. This involves the migration of data from one system to another which can make data vulnerable to security breaches and inaccuracy. It, thus, becomes important to conduct data migration testing to ensure that the migrated data matches the original data.
  • Regression Testing: Certain changes might be carried out in the existing codes and backend of the software. In such cases, it is important to conduct regression testing to ensure that it does not impact software functionality and that an application still functions as it was expected.

Important aspects of Finacle Wealth Management Systems

Following are the important aspects of Finacle Wealth Management Systems:

  • A Complete Solution: The Finacle Wealth Management Systems offer a complete wealth management solution offering a wide range of investment products and services. It allows transacting across multiple different asset classes including, but not limited to Equity, Mutual Funds, Insurance, Bonds, Futures & Options, Exchange Traded Funds, etc.
  • Client-Focused Approach: Finacle Wealth Management System ensures a holistic understanding of the client requirements and empowers experts to make better decisions. It facilitates the evaluation of clients’ risk scores and builds an ideal and personalized portfolio and visualization of the same. It also alerts whenever there is a deviation from the portfolio.
  • Low Cost to Income Ratio: Finacle Wealth Management Systems ensures automation and better operational efficiency. While the front office becomes smarter, the back-office operations witness efficient operations.
  • Use of Advanced Technology: Finacle Wealth Management Systems use advanced technology that is open for collaboration and works on the principle of interoperability. The systems are cloud-ready and can support multi-entity, multi-lingual, multi-currency, multi-national, and multi-time zone operations.

Therefore, it is important to ensure that the Finacle Wealth Management Systems are tested for their performance, accuracy, and functionalities for running the operations in an orderly manner.

At Yethi, we have undertaken various transformational projects, project upgrades and Business-as-usual. We have tested Finacle Wealth Management Systems for some of the major banks and financial institutions. Our end-to-end testing services include functional (Data Migration Audit, System Integration Testing, User Acceptance Testing, Regression Testing, and Automated Testing and non-functional testing (Performance Testing, Security Testing, and UI/UX Testing). Our Test Centre of Excellence is equipped to offer extensive advisory services and reengineer the process.

Yethi’s 5th generation codeless test automation solution, Tenjin a plug-and-play banking aware solution, which minimizes the manual effort and speed up the test execution regardless of the complexity and number of updates. Tenjin’s intuitive features and robotic capabilities enable learning and adapting to application updates with ease.

Test and Test Automation for PSD2 / Open Banking

Test and Test Automation for open banking

The flexibility in digital banking as a form of open banking has compelled UK-based banks to share important financial information in a secured and organised way. The open banking concept is designed to transform the way people handle transactions. It is three years since banks in the UK have adapted to digital transformation and Open Banking, but there’s speculation about how secure the transactions would be.

These speculations about the adoption of PSD2 and Open Banking solutions can be put to rest. If organisations must run an Open Banking Solution successfully, they must ensure the following,

  1. API must be tested to ensure that it can handle the failed instances by responding with proper status codes.
  2. Integrated touchpoints are tested to ensure uncovering of the bottlenecks, irrespective of the application and technology complexities.
  3. The input data like customer or account information, deposit data, loan information, transaction details, and real-time process details are accessed through an interface that must be thoroughly validated.
  4. The expected performance load of applications must be validated, which concerns the factors like response time, scalability, downtime, and infrastructure costs. It ensures that the system’s stability and performance provide expected results even during high traffic with optimal resource utilisation.
  5. The banking APIs must be validated so that the application performs with desired results. Authentication is important for ensuring the performance of APIs.
  6. Validation of internal standards for creating audit trails and reporting procedures are must to ensure that the TPP partners have permission to maintain compliance for the API integrations of the financial institutions.

Beyond these speculations and apprehensions, there are opportunities to explore.

What is Open Banking?

Through open banking, the consumers, financial institutions, and third-party service providers can access and control customer information, financial records and transaction data from the banks and non-banking financial institutions using application programming interfaces (APIs). The concept of open banking is redefining the BFSI industry and customer experience.

Even though consumers are a little apprehensive about sharing a massive amount of data in an open platform through APIs, due to a couple of things going wrong, the fact that open banking has the potential to enhance the consumer experience is definite. However, customers must allow banks to access and control their personal and financial data by signing the terms and conditions of sharing the details with the third-party service providers.

Features of Open Banking:

  • Cash transactions are easy and convenient for the customers
  • Transferring cash to several accounts, or credit cards is faster using open banking
  • Checking the account balance of multiple banks on one platform
  • Calculates saving and expenses automatically based on user’s transactional behaviour
  • Combining all information of bank accounts and credit cards into a unified statement
  • Better money management using an AI personal financial assistant
  • Suggestions on saving for bills and insurance
  • Access to bank information for calculation of accurate credit score
  • Approval on loans and investment on a uniform platform

What is PSD2 and why is it now an integral part of open banking?

PSD2 Open Banking regulation implemented by the European Union. It is a regulatory directive initiated by the European Banking Association (EBA) and applies to European Union markets. The purpose of PSD2 is to make the payments and transactions easy, and banks must grant the rights to their customers to choose their payment partners to simplify the payment and transaction processes.

As PSD2 and open banking regulations have evolved to complement each other, and accordingly, open banking must also be compliant with all PSD2 directives. Open banking has now improved its scope by covering all payment products of PSD2 like Credit Cards, Debit Cards, e-Wallets, and more. Payments are likely to be fast and convenient through open banking solutions.

PSD2 and open banking serve as a uniform platform, eliminating various intermediaries such as merchant payment, payment gateway, Visa / MasterCard, issuing bank, acquiring bank, and others.

Features of PSD2:

  • Opens access to payment information for third-party payment service providers
  • PSD2 simplifies liability issues between the user bank and the third-party service
  • The PSD2 improves consumer protection
  • It eliminates the need for additional charges on payment methods
  • PSD2 ensures strict protection of consumers’ financial data by meeting security requirements for electronic payments

How do testing and QA work for open banking / PSD2?

To access open banking, banks must create open APIs, which must comply with regulatory standards, security protocols, safe data transfer, compliance with all the directives, and more. With these and many more prospects, Open banking needs regulatory testing, penetration testing, integration testing, performance testing, and security testing to ensure end-to-end platform security.

As customers access and transfer sensitive information and data simultaneously via open banking, the platform requires API, accessibility, and more testing to ensure that the platform is up and running without any technical glitches.

As open banking continues to grow and all financial institutions operating in Europe and UK must conform to Open Banking standards, it would require the testing team to ensure that the APIs and the platforms perform without disruption. They would seek expert QA professionals with extensive knowledge of open banking landscapes. The number of financial institutions is growing globally, which eventually may have to comply with Open Banking/PSD2. There is a greater possibility and opportunity to expand QA solutions far and wide.

Yethi’s role as QA testing partner for Open Banking / PSD2

Yethi is a reliable manual, and automation testing partner focused on the banking, financial and insurance sectors. We offer functional, non-functional and test advisory services including acceptance, regression, integration, performance, vulnerability assessment and penetration testing, and data migration. We have a well-managed Test Centre of Excellence by expert consultants who also offer tailored business process engineering.

An automated API provides intelligent, reliant, and seamless API testing to reduce testing costs and test-cycle time. Yethi no-code software automation testing solution, Tenjin is PSD2 and Open Banking ready. Its Oauth2 can work with the security and authentication standards currently in place. With its ease of use, Tenjin can test across your internal or on the sandbox environment. With multiple upstream and downstream integration points, Tenjin is ready for REST API.

Tenjin is built to be programming free and allows the functional testing teams and the system developers to test applications, making Functional, UI / UX testing, API testing and UI based business process testing easy and hassle-free. Our 5th generation codeless automation testing tools automate testing at the API level, enabling granular and faster test cycles in a multi-system environment; thereby facilitating early test adoption in today’s agile world.

Tenjin is an advanced automation suite, which can streamline API-level testing needs by rapidly switching between API and the GUI. We provide comprehensive regression testing in integrated environments to ensure a balance solution of agility and practicality.

Importance of UI and UX Testing and Yethi’s Role

Creative designs and seamless navigation of the website determines the fate of how well the organizations connect with their audience. Only a visually appealing (UI) application with an easy user interface (UX) can stand out in the crowd, attract new customers, and retain the existing ones. Both, a good UI design and an exceptional UX design are necessary to offer a seamless and impactful user experience, failing which the company’s reputation would be severely affected. Hence, it is essential to carry out detailed UI/UX testing to make sure they work without any flaws.

The UI and UX parameters are critical for improved user experience and creating new inclusions of a smarter and future-oriented reality that will take your business to newer heights. Let’s understand what UI/UX is and why testing them is crucial.

What is UI testing?

UI, stands for the user interface, is the design layout of applications running on multiple operating systems. UI testing ensures that the application elements and stages, including the links and buttons, work without disruptions. Through UI testing, the developers and testers continuously enhance the application quality by fixing all its elements and functionalities.

What is UX testing?

UX, is the abbreviation to user experience, ensures end-users response, engagement and association with the website or mobile application. UX testing includes the overall look and feel of the website considering the user engagement. Whenever the company adds some new features to its product, the testers must perform UX testing to check how it impacts the user experience. Frequent feedback from the customers will help improve the product.

Importance of UI and UX testing

Businesses aim to improve their efficiency and profitability, acquire new customers, and retain the older ones. With this being the focus, it is essential to approach business smartly and intelligently. Companies need to learn different user perspectives so that products and services can meet customer expectations.

Through User interface testing (UI testing), testers ensure that the buttons, fields, labels, and other items on the screen work without any functionality errors. UI testing further checks the control over toolbars, colour, fonts, buttons, sizes, icons, and more and how these functionality responds, whenever there is some input from the users. User Interface tells us how the user interacts with the mobile and website applications. Testing of UI removes the blockage so that the users are easily able to connect with the software. The four parameters to check the product

UI of tested products are:

  • Easy to use and easy to navigate
  • Use consistency for the users
  • Easy user access of information and features  
  • Application compatible for uninterrupted performance

Sometimes users purchase and use a product followed by customer reviews, while others would opt for a product based on application interface and user experience. Every customer has a particular purpose for using applications. UX testing helps in identifying and achieving these purposes. When customers use products, they wish to obtain maximum value; hence, it becomes important to deliver applications of higher quality.

Through UX testing, an organisation ensures that they provide a fully functional quality software or application to the customers enabling them to navigate through the app without experiencing system errors or malfunctions. UX testing allows you to find a few of the core issues of applications, which are as follows:

  • Identifying the damaged links
  • Fixing the page errors
  • Resolving the content and language issues
  • Solving poor page design layout
  • Focus on enhancing messaging, images, and branding
  • Ensuring site and application uniformity

The smallest modification in the application interface, at the development stage, may have a significant impact on the software functionalities. Since the development team frequently incorporates changes in the User Interface, the UI and UX testing must be an integral part of the continuous development process. Since it is affordable to fix the UI bugs in the development phase, companies are likely to avoid incurring the cost during the product release by testing the application UI at the development stage.

Benefits of UI and UX tests

Cost-efficient

It is essential to build a high-quality product development and ensure the application performance rather than fixing the design. Conducting usability testing just before releasing the product to the market can help save more time and money. It also ensures customer satisfaction. It can bring down on unnecessary expenses and help you release an error-free product in the market.

High Conversion Rate

Website usability testing ensures improved user experience, which helps in enhancing website conversion rates by up to 75%. By improving the UI and UX of applications you are aiming to offer your users a fully functional application, which ensures complete user satisfaction. The user experience encourages long-term commitment from your users. By welcoming constructive feedback from your users, you encourage them to provide you with fresh ideas to improve your application functionality, further improving the product quality.

Brand awareness and loyalty

All businesses have different purposes and accordingly, they release solutions. But the success of each solution depends on how well your users relate to the brand. The secret of establishing brand success depends on how your users are encouraged to use the solution. The users must have an adequate understanding of the solutions provided to them so that the organisations are able to build brand affinity and expand the strength of their target audience.

Yethi’s Role as UI / UX Testing Partner

Banking is leaping towards digitalisation, and as a result, companies are investing in applications to gain more mobility. There are diverse mobile applications, and each comes with several challenges. To overcome these challenges testing across multiple devices and networks is essential.

At Yethi, we offer exhaustive test coverage throughout all aspects of digital transformation. From UX and UI testing to functional, compatibility, usability as well as security, we provide test across a large set of devices, OS, and browsers.

Yethi’s test automation solution, Tenjin, ensures quality testing of data elements on your digital and mobile assets. It incorporates real-time testing of native and hybrid mobile applications across diverse platforms, thereby eliminating delays and redundancies. Tenjin can reduce the testing time by 15-20% as it has a domain-specific test library of over half a million test cases.

Conclusion

When it rolls down to UX and UI testing, Yethi’s test management solution delves into the essential aspects of testing. To significantly bring down the testing time of an application, we follow the test selection method, i.e., we pick and choose only those test cases relevant to your domain. Having a collective industry experience of more than 25 years, we understand the importance of end-to-end development flow to minimize UI and UX issues and errors.