Banking Domain Application Testing – Guide

Banking, Financial Services Sector

Banking, Financial Services (BFS) is one of the largest sectors providing financial operations. With the continuous trend of digitization that covered every industry, the BFS sector also shifted towards digital banking. According to American Banker, in early 2020, when the pandemics started globally, there was:

• a 200% increase in mobile bank registrations (March and April)
• an 85% increase in mobile traffic (March and April
• a 46% increase in mobile banking channels usage by baby boomers
• a 37% more frequent use of mobile phones by customers

An analyst at Wells Fargo Securities, Mike Mayo, has given his opinion on the global shift towards a more digital future and the demand for mobile banking. He said,

What we’re seeing is the greatest acceleration of digital banking in history. What’s taken place over the last few months may have taken place over 2 to 10 years if the pandemic had not come along. That’s because habits are breaking.

Today, the global online banking market size is projected to reach $31.81 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 13.6% from 2020 to 2027. The delivery of financial services is being more and more adjusted to web and mobile applications. Banking software is considered to be one of the most important with regards to its functionality, performance, user experience, usability, and security. Hence, every banking application has to be flawless for end-users as it processes tons of confidential financial data. To ensure the app is seamless and works smoothly, there is a need for thorough banking application testing. Thus, what is banking domain application testing? What test cases for banking application in software testing are applicable and highly important for BFS?

What do we know about App Testing?

Software testing is the process of finding defects in a software application and reporting these defects to the software engineers for further fixing. The more flaws quality assurance engineers can find, the more chances are that the final product will work smoothly. If the application you use has no bugs it means that the quality assurance team did their best job to enhance your user experience.

The process of testing is very important and is conducted in one of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) phases. Also, it is the most crucial stage. In the financial industry, banking app testing is an obligatory part of the process taking into account the data banks work with and the level of responsibility.

The primary focus of financial software testing is to understand what is the application like: is it a fully functional program? Or a supplement to an app? Or some other payment system/feature that has to be integrated into the banking application? Every banking app (or the integrated payment system) has its unique characteristics. Thus, it may include but is not limited to:

• Complex business workflows
• Multi-tier functionality to process numerous concurrent sessions
• Real-time processing
• High rate of transactions per second
• Batch processing
• Secure transactions
• Massive storage system
• Tracking and reporting section/a>
• Tracking and reporting section
• Recovery management
• Large-scale integration with multiple banking applications

Having a complete understanding of the object to be tested, the quality assurance engineer figures out what are the requirements, and what types of testing to initiate. For instance, there is a general structure of mobile banking applications testing. These may vary according to the company provider, requirements of the client and the very app to be tested:

• Requirement Analysis. This stage is the primary and consists of requirements gathering and evaluations.

• Requirement Review. The stage presupposes a second look at the requirements by both sides (the client and the service provider) and their preparation to be documented.

• Business Requirements Documentation. This is the written document with all the quality assurance testing requirements that are to be adhered to within the whole process of testing. As this document is agreed upon by the two parties, its altering is impossible unless there is a solid reason.

• Database Testing. This is a layered process of testing. It has the user interface (UI) layer (interface design of the database), the business layer (database supporting business strategies), the data access layer, and the database itself.

• Integration Testing. This type of testing requires individual software modules to be combined and tested as a group. Thus, the testing aims at evaluating the compliance of a system or component with the app’s functional requirements.

• Functional Testing. The test cases of functional testing ground on the specifications of the software component under test. Functions are tested by making input and examining the output. The test cases of financial apps at Inoxoft are conducted with the help of fake cards. These cards (fake input) aim at understanding the quality, speed, and accuracy of payments (output) that are recorded in the banking app history, but no payments are deducted from the card.

• Security Testing. One of the most crucial mobile banking app testings belongs to security compliance issues. Security flaws in the financial sector can cause damage to any stakeholder involved. What are the security protocols each banking app should adhere to?

The first and the most important is The General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR). This regulation functions in the EU and addresses the issue of personal data transfer outside the EU giving individuals control over their personal data and simplifying the regulatory environment for international business by unifying the regulation within the EU.

The second is the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), according to which five banking regulators are “empowered to prescribe uniform principles, standards, and report forms to promote uniformity in the supervision of financial institutions.”

The third security policy is the ISO/IEC 27001, which provides requirements for any information security management system, e.g. the banking application. Using this regulation allows organizations to manage the security of financial information, intellectual property, employee details, or information entrusted by third parties.

The fourth regulation is the International Standard on Assurance Engagements 3402 (ISAE 3402). It is an international assurance standard that assures customers and service users of any organization customers will receive adequate internal controls.

The fifth standard is The EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks provide companies with a standard to comply with data protection requirements when transferring personal data from the European Union and Switzerland to the United States.

The sixth is the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, designed to provide communications security over a computer network, especially in written and voice messaging. Client-server applications use this protocol to communicate across a network in a way designed to prevent eavesdropping and tampering.

Of course, these are only a part of the existing protocols mentioned but nonetheless important in banking app development and further testing. What concerns the banking app security testing phase, it includes testing of integrations with other apps, unsecured communications, security breaches that allow malware to be installed, utilization (and integration) of different authentication procedures, and testing hidden parts of the application.

• Usability Testing. It is a type of testing used to evaluate an application by testing it on users, giving direct input on how real tech-savvy users use the system.

• Acceptance Testing. A test case belonging to this type of testing determines if the requirements of a business requirements documentation are met. It involves performance testing.

Performance Testing

Performance testing is the process of checking the complete banking app (and not only banking) for possible flaws in the way it works by giving it a certain workload. Thus, the main focus of this testing is to find out the speed, scalability, and stability of the system. Hence the speed is measured to understand the velocity of app responses, scalability measurement shows the maximum number of users that can use the application at once and it will not crash. And, stability shows whether the app works as a clock under different loads or there are possible defects. Performance testing includes

1. Load testing

2. Stress testing

3. Scalability testing

4. Endurance testing

5. Spike testing

6. Volume testing

These testing types together with test cases for banking applications aim at finding problems and flaws in an app. After extensive testing procedures, the following problems might be found:

• Poor time of response
• Poor scalability
• Bottlenecks (CPU-utilization, memory utilization, network utilization, operating system limitations, disk usage)

Our Expertise

At Inoxoft, the workflow of the testing process looks as follows. It includes test planning, test design, test evaluation, and test execution.

Test Planning

The stage of test planning includes developing test guidelines for a project with the input artifacts such as Test Guidelines (Organizational level) and Case Development, and the forecasted output artifact should be the revised Test Guidelines.

Also, the purpose of test planning is to set the focus of the test effort for each iteration together with stakeholders’ agreement on the defined goals that will drive the test effort. The input artifacts are Iteration Planning, Software Development Planning, Use-Case Model, Design Model, and Deployment Model. Based on the input, the output artifact should be a complete Test Plan.

Test Design

The purpose of the test design stage is to figure out a set of verifiable Test Cases (for each build) and test procedures showcasing the realization of these Test Cases. The input artifacts should include Test Plan, Use Cases, Supplementary Specifications, Test Guideline, Iteration Plan, Software Architecture Document, and Design Guidelines. Thus the output artifacts are the complete Test Cases.

Test Execution and Evaluation

The purpose of test execution is to obtain test results. The results have to be verified and defects logged as necessary to be altered. So, the artifact input encompasses both Test Build and Test Scripts. The output artifact will be the Test Results.

Evaluating tests presupposes test result assessment, making log changes on requests, and calculation and delivery of key measures to produce the Test Evaluation Summary. Thus, the input artifacts are the Test Results and the output – Test Evaluation Summary and Test Log.

After these 4 stages, there is a possibility the software will include defects. Hence, there also is the fifth stage, where these defects are managed.

Defect Management

The stage is designed to resolve and measure defects or incidents found in the software product. This way, these defects have to be identified and reported. So, the input artifact of Test Results should generate the Software Defect output artifact that is further submitted and fixed by software engineers.

Inoxoft provides web application and mobile application testing services as it is an automation testing company. Mobile development is changeable and Inoxoft tries to follow all the trends and updates of software development and testing. Our team of QA experts offers to conduct accurate testing, monitoring, code, and design solution controlling to ensure the best quality of your app. Also, Inoxoft provides QA testing of different size web applications. To do this, we utilize test automation services with the latest tool upgrades at your service. We provide QA automation services to deliver applications that meet market challenges, are fast, user-friendly, and scalable. If you need fintech industry app testing and one of the best customer-oriented services or detailed answers on your QA-based questions – contact us, let’s talk!