To keep up with the ever-changing digital landscape and the rising demands of their customers, banks need to offer seamless, defect-free applications
To keep up with the ever-changing digital landscape and the rising demands of their customers, banks need to offer seamless, defect-free applications with highly diverse browser and mobile technology fragmentation.
As opposed to other applications, the bank applications are more complicated largely because they deal with millions of transactions carrying sensitive information every minute. As a consequence of the digital transformation that has taken place over the past few years, the banking sector has been forced to evolve at a fast pace. In line with the digitization of the financial sector, the customer expectations and demands have also progressed; the bank applications are expected to be available for customer service 24/7 with no compromise on quality or performance.
Software Testing for Bank Apps
For a user, using a bank application is simple and intuitive; they can complete their transactions in a matter of minutes with a few taps or clicks from the comfort of their homes. Owing to the growing competition in the market for the financial applications, banks and other financial institutions are in a race to provide better quality, usability, and interface in order to retain customers. However, on the other side of the yardstick, the bank application software in itself is quite complex.
A simple glitch in the performance or any function might not only cost them large amounts of money but they are also at a risk of losing their customers. Therefore, software testing tools are a prerequisite for the banking applications to ensure that not only the large financial transactions are performed timely and accurately, but they also measure if the application is secure enough to safeguard the private and sensitive data of their users. Software testing is also necessitated for the bank apps as they are able to determine whether the app is at par with the standards and in compliance with the various laws and regulations.
The testing process for these applications takes more time and resources as compared to other applications mainly because there are thousands of dependencies in a banking software which requires meticulous documentation and continuous monitoring.
Software testing is somewhat more challenging for the bank apps considering their multiple layers of development, thousands of dependencies, and numerous security standards involved. Software applications for the banking and financial sector have several essential features which in turn makes the software testing tools an indispensable part of the development lifecycle. It is necessary for the bank apps to have multi-tier functionalities and they should be able to concurrent user sessions at any time.
They should also be equipped to deal with large scale integrations with other software platforms, function adequately under different operating environments. It is of utmost importance for the application to generate secure transactions on a large scale while safeguarding the sensitive user data. In addition to this, the application should be able to offer real-time service to the users without any delays, which means that all transactions must also be tracked and reported back to the user accurately.
To cater to the risks, threats, and other issues in the application, it should have a robust system so that it is able to troubleshoot any issues or customer complaints. Most importantly, the bank application must also have a disaster recovery or contingency plan to prepare for any critical or emergency situations and also to protect the users.
Typical Testing Phases for Bank Apps
Database testing – this stage in the testing process is one of the most critical aspects as it determines the soundness of data migration, data loading, data integrity, rule testing, functional validation, and stored steps.
Functional testing – the functionality of the application is tested against the use cases, requirements, specifications, and test scenarios in this testing phase.
Integration testing – after all the units are tested separately, integration testing is carried out to make sure that all modules or units work well together without any complications.
Security testing – this testing stage is performed on the banking application to ensure that there are security gaps or loopholes in the system which can be exploited by malicious threat actors. For this, the quality assurance team must carry out both positive and negative test scenarios to ensure the validity.
Usability testing – considering that the bank applications are intended for a wide range of audience, usability tests are conducted to determine if it is able to function properly on multiple devices under varying environments and for different user groups as well.
