Banking applications are complex. The software deals with confidential financial data. Banking products are continuously expanding such as ATMs, mobile banking and credit cards. Banking services run 24/7. Banking is impacted by changes in government regulations. Banking apps have to stay up-to-date with frequent technological advancements. The platform for developing the software is designed to cater to both employees and customers.
This elaborate system demands thorough testing. A banking app testing company must ensure all functions of the application are working properly and securely.
A business analyst gathers and documents requirements for a banking application. These could be functional specifications. For example, the system has to send an email every time a user has updated their information on their account. These could also be use cases i.e. a list of actions to achieve a goal. For example, a user may have to go through the following steps to pay bills from a mobile banking application: Open an account, deposit funds, set up a pin, pay bills. Use cases can be illustrated by diagrams. Multiple requirements are written together for a typical banking application that has a range of functions integrated together.
All stakeholders such as quality analysts and development Leeds review the requirements gathered. Requirements are cross-checked to ensure existing workflow is not impacted. Any necessary revisions are made. For example, if a requirement listed for the website is that each page will load in a reasonable time, it is unclear. Experts will revise it to 3 - 5 seconds to give a more precise value for the time frame.
Quality assurance engineers prepare business scenarios from the requirements documents. These are not created in a step format as for use cases. This makes it easier for all business analysts to review them. For example, a customer is transferring funds from one account to another on a web banking application is a business scenario.
Functional testing is broken down into 3 steps: test case preparation, test case review and test case execution. In test case preparation, positive and negative test cases are listed, as derived from business scenarios. Project managers review these. Quality engineers execute test cases through manual or automated testing. Example of a test case may be verifying if the user is able to login with their username and password.
Database specialists perform this testing. Since a database is a separate layer, its testing is separate from functional testing. It is done to ensure data loading, database mitigation, rules testing, stored procedures, testing database schema, testing triggers and data integrity. For example, a tester will check if the mapping of database fields in the back end is compatible with those in the front end, as a part of testing database schema. Validation of such elements will ensure data is stored securely and not manipulated by end users.
Security testers ensure that the data is not exposed to hackers and it complies with industry and federal standards. Vulnerability testing, risk assessment and penetration testing are some of the security testing methods. For example, SQL injection testing checks if the code is working correctly and queries are executed on the server database based on user input like brackets, commas, etc.
This is the final stage of testing. It is done by end users. They check if the application is complying with real world scenarios. They provide an overview of the system as well as identify problems integration tests might have missed. Alpha testing takes place in the development environment and beta testing takes place in the customer’s environment, For example, asking testers via email to provide test results is a way to conduct alpha and beta tests.