Best Practices

Banking App Testing and How to Handle It

Reading Time: 10 minutes

Banking applications have become the essentials to have on our smartphones. Yet, with all the simplicity and convenience they offer, their complex nature remains unchanged and comes with specific considerations. For users, it is setting strong passwords and being cautious about personal data and permissions. For banks, it is rigorous testing and a comprehensive approach to quality assurance.

Banking application testing is the basis of robust functionality and trust-building reputation. In this article, we’ll provide a glimpse into the testing challenges and processes. We’ll also share some tips that might help you prepare an effective QA strategy.

The Critical Importance of Robust Quality Assurance for Banking Apps

Banking applications operate at the intersection of technology, finance, and security. Compared to most digital products, this software handles more sensitive financial data. On top of that, banking apps process critical transactions and must maintain absolute reliability under diverse and demanding conditions.

Every tap, swipe, and transaction carries the weight of customer trust, financial security, and institutional reputation. And a single vulnerability or performance issue can have significant consequences, potentially exposing users to financial risks or causing substantial reputational damage to the institution.

So, in an era where a single line of code can protect or compromise millions of dollars, banking application testing has become the unsung hero of digital finance. To account for all its particularities, you need to get experienced QA engineers in your team or partner with a banking app testing company.

Types of Testing for an Average Banking Application

There’s no universal strategy you can use for banking app testing without any adjustments. Still, the core stages, types of testing, and focus points are pretty much standard: you start with manual testing services, add automation when viable, and continuously improve your QA flows as the functionality and user base expand.

Let’s take a look at what QA checks should become an inseparable part of your development pipeline.

Functional Testing for Operational Accuracy

Banking application functional testing forms the backbone of banking application QA. Its purpose is to validate that every feature and workflow operates exactly as intended. Simply put, you are to check whether the app does what it’s intended to do. Key areas of focus include:

  • Transaction processing. Verifying accurate fund transfers, payment processing, and balance calculations
  • User interface. Ensuring intuitive navigation and consistent user experience across different platforms.
  • Workflow integrity. Confirming that complex banking processes like loan applications, account openings, and transaction histories function seamlessly.
  • Account management. Validating account-related features and user interactions.
  • Financial reporting. Ensuring accurate generation and presentation of financial statements and transaction histories.
  • Contacts and support. Confirming that a user can contact the bank for issue resolution (almost) immediately and without any problems.

On the surface, it looks like the goal of functional testing is simply checking if features work. But it goes beyond that. It’s about ensuring they work precisely, consistently, and securely in every possible scenario.

UI Testing for Intuitive Financial Interfaces

UI testing focuses on the visual part of banking applications—interfaces. The latter are expected to provide clear, consistent, and user-friendly experiences to accommodate complex financial interactions. The ultimate goal is to make financial management look and feel simple. The things you need to test for this are:

  • Visual design consistency. Ensure uniform design elements across different platforms and devices
  • User experience optimization. Create intuitive navigation paths for financial transactions.
  • Interactive element validation. Verify the responsiveness and clarity of buttons, forms, and information displays.
  • Content readability. Ensure clear presentation of financial information and data.
  • Error handling. Design clear and helpful error messaging and guidance mechanisms.

Altogether, these things let you transform complex financial workflows into easily navigable digital experiences. If you can reduce user cognitive load and enhance overall satisfaction, you’ll offload the support center and your staff in places and get a more loyal audience.

Accessibility Testing for Vaster Availability

Accessibility testing extends your client base by making your application better suited for all audiences. It takes down the barriers that prevent interaction with or access to your app for people with physical disabilities, situational disabilities, and socio-economic restrictions on bandwidth and speed. Some of its key elements are the following:

  • Inclusive design. Validating color contrast, text readability, adaptive interface capabilities, etc.
  • Alternative navigation methods. Supporting keyboard-only and voice-controlled interactions.
  • Assistive technology. Ensuring compatibility with screen readers, voice commands, and alternative input methods.
  • Sensory adaptation. Providing alternative content representations for users with visual or auditory limitations.
  • Regulatory compliance. Aligning with international and regional accessibility standards like WCAG and ADA.

Accessibility testing is now a legal requirement imposed by governments in most countries. Mandatory or not, tech teams should aim to create truly inclusive technologies. Providing equal financial access regardless of individual abilities or technological constraints benefits both users and businesses.

Compatibility Testing for Universal Access

While accessibility testing adapts your banking application to be suitable for different humans, compatibility testing does a similar thing, but with their smartphones. People use a vast variety of devices, all with different hardware and specifications. The only way to make sure the application is equally usable on all is to test its behavior on:

  • Various device types. Verifying application performance across smartphones, tablets, laptops, and PCs.
  • Various platforms. Ensuring consistent functionality across different operating systems, browser configurations, and their versions.
  • Various network conditions. Validating application behavior under different connectivity conditions (Wi-Fi and mobile) and switching between them.
  • Various software versions. Testing across multiple software and hardware versions.

In addition, you need to check for smooth performance with integrated third-party tools and systems. Comprehensive compatibility testing will ensure that customers can access their financial services seamlessly, regardless of the technology used.

Performance Testing for Uninterrupted Access

Performance testing isn’t just simple speed measurements. For banking applications, it’s primarily about maintaining optimal performance under diverse and demanding conditions. A few examples of critical performance testing aspects include:

  • Banking application load testing. Verifying adequate performance under regular (average expected) loads.
  • Transaction volume simulation. Modeling peak usage scenarios.
  • Response time optimization. Ensuring rapid, consistent application responsiveness.
  • Scalability assessment. Verifying the application’s ability to handle increasing user loads.
  • Stress testing. Evaluating system behavior under extreme usage conditions.
  • Resource utilization. Monitoring and optimizing server and network resource consumption.

These tests help banks understand the true capacity of their applications and identify potential bottlenecks. In the end, the very sense of having a banking application is to enable users to perform financial transactions independently and at a convenient moment. And for that, you must secure constant uptime with the same high performance regardless of the traffic.

Compliance Testing for Meeting the Regulations

Banking applications must adhere to a complex web of financial regulations. Compliance testing ensures that applications meet stringent legal and industry standards. Key compliance testing focuses on:

  • Regulatory reporting. Verifying accurate generation of required financial reports
  • Audit trail maintenance. Ensuring comprehensive transaction logging
  • Data protection standards. Confirming alignment with regulations like GDPR and PCI DSS
  • International banking compliance. Testing adherence to cross-border financial regulations
  • Ethical banking verification. Ensuring alignment with international financial conduct standards

Compliance testing is not a one-time event but a continuous process of validation and adaptation. As your application changes grows, you need to make sure it remains compliant with the regulations. And vice versa: when new requirements are introduced, you need to account for them, too.

Security Assessment for Protecting Your System and Users

Cybersecurity is perhaps the most critical aspect of banking application QA. In an era of sophisticated cyber threats, it’s mandatory. Defenses should evolve at least as quickly as viruses and scams, but ideally, even quicker. The basic digital security components to implement and thoroughly check include the following:

  • Authentication mechanisms. Rigorous testing of login processes, multi-factor authentication, and access control systems.
  • Data encryption. Verifying end-to-end encryption of sensitive financial information.
  • Vulnerability assessment. Identifying and mitigating potential security weaknesses before they can be exploited.
  • Compliance verification. Ensuring adherence to international security standards and regulatory requirements.
  • Fraud detection. Testing advanced security mechanisms to prevent and detect suspicious financial activities.

Modern banking application security testing employs advanced techniques like penetration testing, simulated cyber-attack scenarios, and others to uncover potential vulnerabilities proactively.

Keep in mind that security testing of banking application requires highly specialized expertise. It’s best to delegate software testing to QA engineers regardless of the case. Yet, security checks are not the tasks you can distribute between product team members and expect objective feedback.

Given the diversity of mandatory checks, you’ll need several in-house QA engineers to strengthen your team or QA outsourcing services to set up the entire process for you.

Meeting the Multi-Platform Challenges of Mobile Banking Testing

About 73% of the world’s interactions with banks now take place through digital channels. Meanwhile, 63% of bank account holders processed banking-related tasks on their smartphone or tablet in 1Q 2024. Experts foresee mobile payments will grow at a CAGR of 29% from 2020 to 2027. Long story short, mobile banking application testing deserves special attention in your QA strategy.

From a subjective viewpoint, mobile apps for banking have become much more convenient during these past few years. If you’re a regular user (meaning you’re not a B2B user), it’s hardly anything you can’t manage with a mobile app (or we’ve been lucky to have only positive experiences out here).

So, web and mobile banking applications introduce unprecedented convenience, and each can be slightly more convenient for tackling specific tasks. Mobile banking apps have become the preferred choice for many due to their accessibility and on-the-go functionality. Meanwhile, this convenience comes with unique challenges in terms of security and user experience.

In practical terms, it means preparing mobile-specific test cases/scenarios and including a variety of device + OS version + browser combinations on your checklist. The essentials of mobile testing in the banking domain should include:

  • Device compatibility. Ensuring consistent performance across various smartphones and tablets. Both screen sizes and specifications matter during these tests.
  • OS variations. Testing functionality on different iOS and Android versions—from the oldest to the newest supported by the provider, including custom Android distributions used by Google Pixel, Xiaomi, etc.
  • Network resilience. Validating application behavior under varying network conditions, from high-speed broadband to intermittent mobile connections.
  • Performance optimization. Ensuring minimal battery consumption and efficient resource utilization, such as no device heating or lagging.
  • Offline functionality. Verifying critical banking features (at least viewing your balance, for example) work seamlessly without an active internet connection. Though this one is not mandatory, it’s valued by users.
  • Mobile-specific aspects. Checking the variety of gadget-specific scenarios, such as interruptions, camera access, geolocation, interaction with other apps, and so on.

Mobile banking app testing must simulate real-world scenarios, accounting for the unpredictable nature of mobile device usage. And given that we’re entering the AI phase in software, it’s best to prepare your mobile apps to the evolution and new features that may be soon required by the demanding users (if you haven’t done it yet).

Understanding What to Test in a Banking Application

Ultimately, we’d need to take a look at your specific app to prepare a more tailored answer. The backbone of a banking application is more or less the same, regardless of a bank and purpose. So that’s what we’ll focus on for now.

The following examples of what to test can help you determine how the testing goes and add what’s missing to the plan. If not, consider delegating this to professional banking application testing services. Our dedicated QA team can help with that.

1) Cross-browser compatibility:

  • Rendering consistency in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge.
  • Functional integrity across different browser versions.
  • Responsive design adaptation to various screen sizes and resolutions.

2) Session management and security:

  • Timeout mechanism validation.
  • Secure token management.
  • Prevention of concurrent session vulnerabilities.
  • Robust logout and session termination protocols.

3) Transaction workflow:

  • End-to-end payment processing scenarios.
  • International transaction handling.
  • Complex financial product interactions (loans, investments, transfers).
  • Error handling and recovery mechanisms.

For complex and time-consuming scenarios, consider automated software testing services. For example, risk-based test automation, prioritizing test cases based on critical business functions, helps protect high-risk areas. Implementing autotests in your CI/CD pipeline allows for better and smarter test coverage.

Speaking of what you can automate, stick to the general rules: choose cases that are frequently run, cover stable functionality, have clear positive/negative results, etc.

Common Challenges in Banking Domain Application Testing

Every banking app is the result of technology, security, and regulatory compliance converging. And that’s what to the great extent defines the challenges of quality assurance and testing in this domain. Also, these challenges are not static. They evolve continuously, driven by technological advancements, changing customer expectations, and increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.

Technological Complexity

Rapid technological evolution. Modern banking applications must integrate multiple technologies, including cloud infrastructure, microservices architectures, real-time data processing systems, and advanced security mechanisms.

This technological complexity demands:

  • Continuous skill enhancement.
  • Flexible testing methodologies.
  • Deep understanding of emerging technologies.

Legacy system integration. Many banks operate with complex legacy systems, creating unique testing challenges:

  • Ensuring compatibility between new and existing systems.
  • Managing intricate data migration processes.
  • Maintaining system stability during digital transformation.
  • Developing specialized testing approaches for hybrid environments.

Regulatory and Compliance

Dynamic regulatory landscape. Financial regulations are constantly evolving. This requires continuous compliance monitoring, rapid adaptation of testing protocols, and close collaboration with legal and compliance teams. Only awareness and cross-functional cooperation allow for the implementation of flexible testing frameworks.

Global compliance requirements. Testing must address variations in international banking regulations and region-specific security and privacy standards. There are cross-border transaction complexities, localization testing for different markets, and other aspects to account for.

Security and Privacy

Emerging cyber threat landscape. Being an extremely attractive target for hackers and scammers, banking applications face increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. Those include advanced persistent threats, social engineering attacks, complex financial fraud mechanisms, rapidly evolving hacking techniques, and many more.

Data privacy complexities. In addition to everything mentioned above, quality assurance must address stringent data protection regulations. It’s critical to implement and validate advanced encryption methodologies and user data anonymization techniques. Comprehensive privacy impact assessments should be a part of the QA strategy and repeated on a regular basis.

Customer Experience and Usability

Brand and design consistency. It’s critical to ensure uniform design and functionality across multiple platforms. It doesn’t only save your resources on development but also helps users navigate the app regardless of the device they use. Otherwise, the app demands extra learning and causes frustration.

Usability assessment. Banks must ensure their applications are accessible to users with varying technical proficiencies. These apps must be intuitive across different age groups and technological backgrounds. Meanwhile, they must be responsive and performant under diverse usage scenarios.

Performance and Scalability

Real-world performance simulation. Modeling complex, multi-channel banking interactions is mandatory. The team should simulate peak load scenarios and check the app’s behavior under network instability. This requires a special setup and additional tools, as manual checks will be insufficient here.

Adapting the software to growth. As the application’s architecture and the amount of user data it processes increase, the bank needs to adjust both software and hardware accordingly. On the QA side, it means testing all scalability-related aspects, which requires specific expertise.

Best Practices in Banking Application Testing

To begin with, quality assurance requires constant adaptation—to the changes in your application, as well as tools, trends, threats, and so on. QA is a strategic imperative that directly impacts an organization’s reliability, security, and customer trust. And banking software makes it crystal clear. Here are a few things to begin with when building your QA strategy:

  • Holistic approach to testing. Develop end-to-end testing strategies with comprehensive coverage. Use multi-layered testing methodologies. Balance manual and banking application automation testing.
  • Risk-based testing. Prioritize test efforts based on business criticality. Develop intelligent risk assessment frameworks. Foster continuous risk evaluation and mitigation.
  • Cross-functional collaborations. Break down silos between development, testing, and operations. Make sure none of your teams works in isolation. Encourage a culture of continuous learning.
  • Ongoing skill development. In addition to knowledge-sharing initiatives, consider regular training programs and industry certification support.
  • Strategic tool selection. Assess your tools and methodology continuously. Keep an eye on trends and invest in emerging testing technologies. Integrate AI and ML in testing processes if applicable.
  • Software testing automation. Develop reusable test assets. Create self-healing test scripts. Pay sufficient attention to maintaining your test suite and overall process.
  • Efficient data management. Create realistic, anonymized financial datasets, maintaining diversity and statistical representativeness. Ensure compliance with data protection regulations.

Finally, build a framework for continuous improvement. Gather detailed feedback from testing and integrate it into the app’s improvement. Make sure to include user feedback in the quality assurance process.

To Sum Up

The most successful financial institutions view quality assurance as a critical investment in customer trust and operational excellence. They also understand that internet banking app testing is not a destination but a continuous journey. Technology advances. Customer expectations evolve. Testing methodologies must adapt and improve.

Those who master the art and science of comprehensive application testing will emerge as the true innovators in the financial technology ecosystem. It’s all because your banking application is more than just software—it’s a promise. A promise of security, accessibility, reliability, and innovation.

Looking for an expert banking application testing company?

Let’s talk

Inna Feshchuk

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