DIY or “do it yourself” is common when saving money. It’s usually a reference linked to home improvements but can equally apply to broader situations. “DIY payment testing” is a phenomenon in the financial services sector, but at what risk?
At the outset, it may seem like a good idea for a bank’s in-house team to do significant manual testing or use legacy technology. Still, like any other resource-challenged project, payment testing of this kind can be at higher risk of glitches and going spectacularly wrong.
Any testing error can inflict significant pain on a bank and its customers, both in monetary and reputational terms. Payment testing needs to be flawless. Many consider getting external, expert testing resources involved to support the in-house team!
Financial institutions using a specialist, outsourced payments testing option, like Iliad’s T3 switch solution, can benefit in several key ways:
Specialist external solutions, including T3 Switch, are designed specifically for the complex requirements of payment systems. They provide industry-standard testing capabilities that reduce human error, improve test coverage, and ensure that transactions perform as expected across a variety of scenarios and payment rails. Recent technological advances are being leveraged for the first time to build platforms that can truly address the complexities of a modern payment system.
Building and maintaining a sophisticated in-house testing environment is often costly and time-consuming. Specialist, external solutions can streamline the process for your in-house team, automate repetitive tasks, and reduce the need for extensive manual testing, actually saving money and resources.
There are four stages to using payment testing solutions successfully:
If you can get (2) and (3) to near zero and add automation to (4) using an externally created, cutting-edge testing solution, then you can better utilise the expertise in your own team to do what they should be doing “creating great test cases” – tweaking and evolving them based on the results they observe.
Payment ecosystems must comply with strict regulatory standards (e.g., PCI DSS, SEPA, ISO 20022). Specialist testing providers are generally quick to incorporate updates to meet new regulations and industry standards, ensuring compliance and reducing the risk of costly regulatory issues.
Current payment testing solutions are built with a focus on security and fraud prevention, using robust testing methods to simulate real-world threats. This ensures that the institution’s payment systems are resilient against security vulnerabilities and fraud risks.
As financial institutions scale or adapt to new payment types, currencies, or platforms, specialist testing solutions offer the flexibility to adjust quickly. These solutions often provide cloud-based or modular testing capabilities that allow financial institutions to scale up or down based on business needs.
Technologies such as ISO20022 and API evolve at a rate of knots. Unless you can manage multiple versions of many interlinked components, then you are in trouble. This should be a key feature/component of a product or platform-based payments testing approach.
Specialist tools offer sophisticated analytics and reporting features, allowing institutions to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs), identify issues early, and make data-driven decisions to enhance system performance and reliability.
Some of our customers test continually without manual intervention. They automatically get a warning signal if an element of the payment system being tested breaks or something goes wrong. Thorough, automated testing and quality assurance are “baked in”, so they’re not an afterthought or something that gets “squeezed” as projects inevitably run late.
Leveraging a specialist provider helps institutions speed up the testing process, accelerating the launch of new products and services. This is crucial for staying competitive in a rapidly evolving payments market where consumers expect instant, seamless, and secure payment experiences.
Nothing should go live in payments without being tested to the best of your capabilities. The price of getting a new payment “product” to market even a week early can generate $m of dollars. Thorough payments testing can help achieve this.
Partner with a proven payments testing provider. What’s not to like?
In summary, specialist payments testing solutions from a leading supplier provide a more reliable, efficient, and cost-effective approach to ensuring that payment systems meet high performance, security, and compliance standards. This allows financial institutions to focus on core business activities while delivering a superior customer experience.
Effective payment testing remains key to the future health of all banks and financial institutions worldwide. Partnering with a progressive, specialist provider will bring peace of mind in a rapidly changing, technologically driven financial services environment. With a proven payment testing product, you will also get the distilled experience that went into building it, leveraging clearly beneficial expertise.
The Payments Association
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© Copyright 2024 The Payments Association. All Rights Reserved. The Payments Association is the trading name of Emerging Payments Ventures Limited.
Emerging Ventures Limited t/a The Payments Association; Registered in England and Wales, Company Number 06672728; VAT no. 938829859; Registered office address St. Clement’s House, 27 Clements Lane, London, England, EC4N 7AE.
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