How To Test Banking Applications?

Let’s first understand the characteristics of a Banking Application:

 Multi-tier functionality to support thousands of concurrent user sessions.
 Large-scale Integration: Typically, a banking application integrates with numerous other
applications such as Bill Pay utility and Trading Accounts.
 Complex business workflows
 Real-Time and Batch processing
 High Rate of Transactions per second
 Secure Transactions
 Robust Reporting section to keep track of day to day transactions.
 Strong Audit to troubleshoot customer issues.
 Massive storage system
 Disaster / Recovery Management
The 10 points listed above are the most important characteristics of a banking application.
Banking applications have multiple tiers involved in performing an operation.

For example, a Banking application may have:

 Web Server to interact with end-users via Browser.
 Middle Tier to validate the input and output for the webserver.
 DataBase to store data and procedures.
 Transaction Processor which could be a large capacity Mainframe or any other Legacy
system to carry out Trillions of transactions per second.
When we talk about testing banking applications, it requires an End to End Testing
methodology involving multiple Software Testing techniques to ensure:
 Total coverage of all banking workflows and Business Requirements.
 The functional aspect of the application
 The security aspect of the application
 Data Integrity
 Concurrency
 User Experience
What makes banking applications so complex?
 Banking software mainly deals with confidential financial data so that the performance of
software should be error-free and secure.
 Developers prefer a complicated design to develop these applications to ensure that the
application runs in a desired secure manner.
 Banking is a constantly changing world. Banking, today, is made available to the
customer using different channels like brick & mortar branches, ATMs, online banking
and customer care.
 With the advent of technology, many wallets have flooded the markets which connect to
the banking systems for financial transactions.
 Banking is also expected to be up and running 24 X 7 with high performance. Software
upgrades, instant fixes, etc. cannot be allowed to impact this availability.
  The banking world is also highly impacted by the constant changes brought in by the
government in the form of banking regulations. Any changes to the tax structure will
impact the banking system as well.
 The banking system also needs to be up-to-date as far as new technologies are concerned.
Data analytics like Big Data Processing and getting instincts out of big data using Data
Science is growing traction in the banking world.
The above mentioned points make the banking system complex for developers to create a
software application around it.

Importance Of Testing Banking Application

 Testing the Banking application assures that all the activities are not only executed well
but also remain protected and secured.
 Banking software is complicated with thousands of dependencies, and the testing process
requires more time, resources, and continuous monitoring.
 As finances are involved here guidelines have to be followed strictly. Both testers and
developers should have good domain knowledge.
 Most importantly, it has to be ensured that the laws and regulations are enforced correctly
in financial transactions. This can only be ensured with testing.
 It’s also important to ensure that the application and the infrastructure on which the
application has been deployed is able to handle the load, especially during peak business
hours, without causing any disruption. This can be ensured by performing performance
testing.
 In today’s digital world, the one thing that concerns everyone is that of security. The
banking applications and the financial transactions that are performed within it needs to
be secure from any attempt to break-in. This can be ensured by performing security
testing. Security testing helps to enforce industry standards to secure financial
transactions.
 It’s also important to ensure that different modules of a banking application are integrated
properly and the objective of the client is achieved. System Integration Testing helps to
achieve this task.

Banking App Testing Workflow

The typical stages involved in testing Banking Applications are shown in the below
workflow. We will be discussing each stage individually.
This is the Waterfall model for testing an application.

Requirement collection

Business scenario preparation

Preparation test cases

Planning a test plan

Functional testing

Integration testing

System testing

Database testing

Security testing

User Acceptance testing (acceptance testing)