Secure Your Payment Gateway with Quality Assurance

The e-tail industry is flourishing with rising inclination of shoppers toward online shopping. Statista has reported that the global ecommerce sales are expected to reach 17.5% by 2021 with credit cards being the most preferred payment option for online shoppers worldwide. With the advent of rapid digitalization and e-commerce, the use of cash payment method is reducing at an exponential rate, necessitating the need for a robust and secure payment gateway. Considered a leader in online and mobile payment, PayPal currently has about 277 million active accounts across the globe.

The sensitivity of the data involved makes a payment gateway highly susceptible to vulnerabilities, which may expose valuable information in case of a breach. The banking industry is no stranger to the ongoing digital wave and is adopting the required measures to ensure a smooth transactional flow. As banks are incorporating sophisticated software to streamline their digital processes, they need to set down a well-thought testing strategy. Software quality assurance is all the more important in such a scenario as a weak application may cause serious consequences in terms of financial losses and accountability and credibility issues.

Understanding Payment Gateways

Payment gateways facilitate communication and transmit transaction information between a payment portal (such as a website, mobile phone or interactive voice response service) and front-end processor of the acquiring bank. For this, it begins by encrypting payment information, and then proceeds to authorizing payment and securely passing the information between sender and receiver. When an order is confirmed by both the customer’s as well as merchant’s web server, a request from the application is sent to the payment gateway for payment processing. After completion of the processing, gateway sends a response to the application in terms of success or failure.

Payment gateway technology varies for online merchants and brick and mortar businesses. Websites require application programming interfaces (APIs) plugged into the online system through programming to enable their functionality. Whereas, in brick and mortar businesses, the company requires a point-of-sale terminal that connects electronically through either a phone line or internet connection.

Now, the key concern of millions of people across the Globe lies around – “Is my transaction safe?”, “Is my information secure?” Suppose, a customer makes an online e-commerce payment tonight and wakes up tomorrow to find his entire account nil, it is certainly going to baffle and enrage the customer. So, security is an integral component of all payment gateways, as sensitive data needs to be protected from any kind of fraudulent activities. A successful payment gateway effectively encrypts payment information and maintains the customer’s information security. It helps in acquiring customer satisfaction and retaining their loyalty. Thus, it becomes essential to ensure correct functionalities, performance and security of the gateway. This is where testing plays an important role in safeguarding the interest of both the parties.

Payment gateway testing requires continuous planning and diligence since it involves testing of different aspects such as security, web service connectivity, authorization, and data encryption. Hence, rounds of rigorous planning and strategic execution become essential. End-to-end testing is to be performed with dedication and accuracy as the application is to be used for sensitive purposes.

Four major aspects that need to be assessed and evaluated while keeping payment gateway testing in view are:

Functional Testing:

Functional testing is required to determine whether the user is being presented with all the payment options such as credit card, debit card, net banking, cash card, etc. The gateway should be able to identify a user’s geographical location and convert the calculations as per the region-specific currency and applied taxes. In case of an unsuccessful transaction, an error message should be clearly communicated, and the payment processing should be stopped by all means.

Integration Testing:

Integration testing ensures a smooth transaction flow and payment validation. It checks for the payment gateway’s compatibility on different platforms such as website and mobile applications. Moreover, it validates and verifies correct order placement and amount deduction. In case of a cancellation, integration testing analyzes if the whole amount is refunded to the user account successfully.

Security Testing:

Security testing is inevitable for a payment gateway software in order to prevent vulnerabilities and guarantees safe transaction. It involves testing encryption of data, information channels and server-connected web services, presence of required SSL certificates and safety access points, safeguarding against vulnerabilities like SQL injections, spoofing, and cross-site scripting.

Performance Testing:

Performance is another important aspect that needs to be tested to see that a transaction does not fail if multiple users are trying to transact simultaneously. Under this, the gateway is tested for performance under high load and different environments. It also checks whether the necessary load balancing components are installed and there is sufficient availability of space and memory across the server.

Conclusion:

The module of Payment Gateway is the most critical and sensitive component for any e-Commerce application that intends to accept payments from its users. It may negatively impact customer experience if functioning is not proper or there is any gap in the payment process. Hence, it is essential to test this component very minutely before implementing. Especially testing tool and team should be chosen very carefully and a proper test environment should be set up. An effective testing strategy should be formulated both for the test environment and live/post-production release environment.

Presence of automated tools has made the task of testing payment gateways easier. The first thing that is to be determined is what to test and how to test. Several tools like Mindreef SOAPscope, IBM Rational for SOA Quality, Selenium, and SoapUI can be used to test the connection and transport. These tools can be used to build test beds of request and response XMLs for testing a Web service. Different tools will be used to fulfil different goals and tasks. Some tools will help with data generation, some with test execution, and some with regression test-bed maintenance. Free sandbox environment can be used for trial and exploratory purposes to test the gateway.  Sandbox is extremely helpful and gives the team that extra flexibility to customize the tool and test as in depth as required.

Cigniti Technology has a dedicated TCoE for different testing domains. Our testing consultants thoroughly understand systems, network and software architecture, and our frameworks are designed after rigorous research by testing experts.

In addition, Cigniti has created ready-to-use test accelerators and solutions across different platforms in the retail domain, leveraging Digital and Retail Test Center of Excellence and Domain Competency Group (DCG). These accelerators can reduce testing struggles as early as from the very first day of engagement. Cigniti’s automated end-to-end testing services in retail, is focused on POS, Merchandising, CRM, and WMS. It essentially augments the user experience in stores as well as online platforms which eventually contributes to improved sales and profitability.