How to Test Banking Applications: Tips & Tricks

by Igor - QA Team Lead on 03/1/2019

Software peculiarities play a huge role when it comes to the development of a highly-efficient quality assurance strategy. If the product is complicated with thousands of dependencies, the testing process requires more time, resources, and continuous work monitoring. Testing of banking software is a case in point.

Based on my 10-years experience in banking, I divided these systems into three categories:

Software for banking employees;
Software for bank customers;
Platform for the development of banking software.

Suitable banking CRM (Customer Relationship Management software) stores all the client data, from the signing of the relevant contract to its completion.

Therefore, having experience with various banking software, I faced the problems that strongly influenced my work responsibilities and didn’t always depend on me. For example, the ability to perform tasks well and on time.

As a bank clerk in the past, I prepared the list of important points that can help my colleagues avoid the obstacles I encountered when testing banking software. Let’s take a closer look at them.

Usability & UX

Bankers often lack computer literacy skills (I apologize to my former colleagues, but this is definitely true), so the interfaces they work with should be intuitive and user-friendly. Notably.

Understanding how and where to create (add) new clients, how to assign them new banking outputs, and how to manage banking operations effectively – all that should be convenient and accessible with a few clicks only. Banking interfaces should have simple graphic attributes (buttons, icons, fields, drop-down lists, etc.), and also include corresponding hints.

This can save a lot of time for bankers and will help them to form a positive reaction from the clients. Meanwhile, everyone who took part in software quality assurance will receive positive feedback. This way, testers should focus maximum efforts to check interfaces and UX thoroughly.

Functionality

As I mentioned before, banking CRM is a huge system with thousands of dependencies between modules. This way, all the internal and external operations which are related to the banking chain must be successfully created, integrated, updated, and finally deleted.

To guarantee the perfect work of these operations, all the dependencies and boundary sections should be thoroughly tested. The traceability matrix method is one of the most useful and optimal approaches for checking the functionality of banking software.

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Load & Performance

In my opinion, one of the biggest problems that employees face while working with banking software is related to performance. Usually, such kind of issues happens at the most inappropriate time. This negatively affects the working effectiveness of almost all bank employees and, as a result, irritates the clients.

Frequent causes of such inaccuracies can be the big number of people who use this software as well as many operations that run simultaneously. The system regular updates can also influence the seamless work of banking software.

The consequence can be minimal, such as user resentment. Or really big, such as user data leakage or problems in banking operations (user data can be inappropriately saved or lost altogether).

Load, performance, and stress testing are strongly recommended in order to avoid problems with software correct work. These approaches help to predict and limit the possible risks that users may encounter when using banking software with heavy workloads.

Security

Banking Software

Every company that works with customer data must ensure its security, confidentiality and protect against any leaks. In the banking sector, this requires more attention than in others. Banking software must meet the above criteria and provide clients with higher data protection, especially when it comes to financial transactions.

Integrity, security, and client transaction should be the top priority of any banking software. Thus, security testing is mandatory.

QA engineers who are working with banking software need to have in-depth expertise in security testing and develop comprehensive test strategies. Testers should not only check the necessary software functionality but also predict possible risks in the future.

Online banking

Checking online banking systems, I recommend using the same approaches as for testing banking software. However, I would like to highlight one special point – online systems work 24/7. This way, applying load, performance, and stress testing. This is important to simulate all possible issues that users may face.

Platforms for Creating Banking Software

For this category fit the same principles as for banking software in general. I would like to recommend the following points to consider when checking banking platforms:

Firstly, you should understand that the platform for the development of banking software is an integral part of such kind of software. This way, the quality of banking platform determines the quality of banking products in general. A high-quality platform ensures the software will be safe, stable, and attractive to users.

Secondly, banking software owners, as well as its future users, believe that banking applications will meet their expectations completely. Because of that, before starting the testing process, QAs should investigate these products from all the aspects: business, technical, and from the user point of view. The huge attention requires the software modules and all possible dependencies (here, as we mentioned above is recommended to use traceability matrix method).

And finally, don’t forget about the proper definition and organization of needed testing approaches. It is necessary to check whether it’s possible to simply install and remove applications on any banking platforms (with any drivers, computer configurations and on different web browsers). Testers should test banking software to avoid various conflicts that users may encounter when using them. All banking software functions should serve users and help them do their work efficiently and without additional efforts.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while we are testing banking software, we should think about the end user first. Testers must identify key categories for which banking software will be evaluated. Applying all their experience, QAs should focus not only on finding errors but also on finding ways to improve products.

If you can hire skilled QAs with practical experience in the banking industry — do that. Experience shows that when testers previously worked in the banking sector, they could verify this type of software more accurately. It has a positive effect on the testing speed and influences the overall quality of banking software.

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