Financial services today provide the most user-friendly customer experiences through applications on mobile and web. However, their increasing usage can invite risks, so they should undergo regular testing processes.
Digital transformation in the banking sector has been a truly disruptive experience. According to Statista’s Forecasted number of digital banking users in the United States from 2021 to 2025,
In March 2021, it was 197 million users, and the number of digital banking users is expected to reach approximately 217 million by 2025.
Mobile banking is already a core medium for companies and customers to work on for all their financial requirements. However, for seamless functionalities, they need proper testing methods and tools to boost their delivery. Any vulnerability or threat discovered in financial apps must be plugged in immediately.
There are numerous reasons for this criticality.
- As financial apps store sensitive and important money-related data and information, testing is important to keep these secure and improve the software’s overall life cycle.
- Another reason is that the business models of banking are complex. The apps that bring this business to the market are also complex. Testing these apps regularly helps improve functionalities, remove bugs and other challenges, and keep them updated.
However, there are challenges in carrying out the testing in financial apps. Here are some of the challenges and how to overcome them.
Challenges to Testing Financial Applications
The financial and banking app testing process has different challenges, as listed below.
1. Data Complexity
The complexity of data is one of the major challenges, especially during the testing phase while developing the app. It becomes difficult for testers to address data complexities, which hits the performance of apps.
As banks store huge amounts of data, most of which is sensitive, they need various levels of encryption. This includes passwords, identities, and other account information types in the back end. The inability to access it easily and extract it for testing creates a challenge.
Data extraction is even more difficult because most companies don’t have the right data extraction tools.
Solutions:
Banks can use big data analytics and AI tools to reduce the complexities of data to test applications properly. The tools can help segregate data among different categories and help apps to run smoothly. It’s important to ensure that the back-end databases are secured from malware, which is a huge threat to data.
2. Integration complexities
Flaws in integration develop complexities, which is a significant challenge during the testing of apps.
Often, testers fail to integrate the testing programs into apps. This may not only hinder performance but also risk of compatibility issues. So, the app may face bugs and other issues at regular intervals.
Solutions:
Testers and quality teams should adopt new integration technologies that match the quality of application development processes.
They should also measure integration complexity levels through analytics and reduce them by integrating suitable platform that fits the best.
3. Data Volume
Financial organizations gather huge amounts of data daily. This high data volume becomes a challenge while testing for financial applications.
The huge size of various data sets causes reduced speed of testing, a fall in reloading, navigation speed, agility of transactions, and more.
Solution:
Testers and quality teams in banks and financial organizations should use automated platforms to test huge data volumes. Automation can ease the process by segregating, aligning, and categorizing data as per various application components that require testing.
4. Security testing
Often, banking apps that have not been adequately protected from security attacks are difficult to test for efficiency, too. If it carries improper security tools or codes, or if they are present but do not function properly, these challenges occur.
In addition, low performance of security solutions in apps may also hinder the performance and cause malfunction of the apps.
Solutions:
Using vulnerability scanners and performing penetration testing can expose errors and security risks. Companies should invest in the latest app security solutions compliant with international security standards.
Developing a robust testing strategy for banking and financial apps is critical for overcoming testing challenges. There are a few options that can help:
- UX testing: for accessibility, design consistency, app responsiveness, navigation, and content readability.
- Performance testing: to test network connectivity, scalability, response times during high traffic on apps, and network performance.
- Security testing: integrate authentication and authorization tools to check log-ins and if any malicious credentials are put in to access accounts.
- They should also test for weak points such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks, the privacy of sensitive data, and encryption.
- Exploratory testing: explore app testing by testing different inputs to check the response of apps and how apps work correctly on different devices or operating systems.
- Use Manual, automated, and AI-powered testing methods: they can be particularly effective for UX or exploratory testing. While automated testing can be more effective for load testing. AI testing methods will help in aligning key app elements like data, integration of platforms, and automating code generation for smooth app running.
Also Read: Why Biometrics is Key to Digital Banking and Finance
Conclusion
Testing banking apps requires a thorough and well-thought-out approach to ensure security, reliability, and usability.
Being aware of common testing of financial applications challenges, banks and financial organizations can create a robust testing strategy to build user-friendly and responsive apps.
Moreover, it is essential to invest in tech and tools that prioritize key testing parts of apps. Also, automated testing tools will function regularly and check for unforeseen issues that may arise during the testing process.
