#testing banking apps

The growth of the digital economy has led to an increased use of banking apps by customers to carry out day to day financial transactions. These include checking account balance, paying utility bills, purchasing goods from eCommerce stores and money transfer. However, experience has shown that not everyone is comfortable using the banking apps for security reasons. Yes, the Damocles sword that every customer fears given the spread of viruses, malware and incidences of criminals siphoning off money from bank accounts.

Moreover, cyber criminals are devising new ways of social engineering to hoodwink customers into parting with their sensitive banking information. Does this ring the alarm bells amongst customers and a frown on the foreheads of people associated with the banking industry?

There is a crying need to promote the use of banking apps given their convenience, utility and the role in optimizing the cost of banking operations. In a competitive digital economy, people switching onto online transactions is a welcome sign. It helps the banks to optimize their workforce and win the competitive edge. The only way to achieve the above mentioned objectives is by making your banking application market proof.

In other words, your banking application should be robust, scalable and secure enough to incorporate future technological changes and address cyber threat challenges. Let’s discuss the five ways in which your banking application can become market proof.

#1 Make the app crash-proof: Your banking app can crash due to a number of reasons primarily from an increased traffic load or cyber threat. To start with, there should be a greater funding for cyber security measures and cooperation among banks, regulators and other stakeholders. The banking application testing should be rigorous and in tune with the latest methodologies like Agile, SAFe and DevOps. Each and every code should undergo quality assurance and testing during the development period.  

The features and functionalities of the app should be tested for their stated outcomes through test automation. Moreover, instead of the hacker taking advantage of the loopholes existing in your banking app, the banking application testing team should penetrate the app to check for glitches. The penetration attack can be executed either through a public Wi-Fi network or any other existing network. The banking application security testing should include testing under slow networks to validate the stability and functionality of the app. The other areas to check for making your banking application crash proof are memory management and device compatibility.

#2 Multi level authentication feature: To ensure a greater security of your banking app, it should have a multi-level authentication feature. Even though it might impact the usability of the app to a certain extent, it makes it difficult for the hacker to break into subsequent layers. Remember! A single tier user authentication feature can be easily broken into by the cyber criminals. Hence, the authentication feature should incorporate features like OTPs or fingerprints to add another security layer. Moreover, incorporate features like sending a text alert or an email to the customer the moment an online activity takes place. These can notify the customer of any misuse of his or her account and prevent fraud.

#3 Device compatibility: The banking apps should undergo compatibility testing across devices, platforms, operating systems and networks. This is a prerequisite to enhance the user experience by validating the app’s user interface, loading and processing speed, and navigability. Since it might not be feasible to validate the testing of the app on every possible device configuration, you should prioritize quality assurance and testing on popular devices.

#4 Mobile Centre of Excellence: Since the banking app will ultimately be used by your employees not to speak of the customers, their feedback should be taken into consideration. So, instead of making the whole designing and testing phase IT driven, the views of stakeholders should be incorporated. It is better to create a Mobile Centre of Excellence to pool resources by people associated with mobile security, developers, and QA for easy access.

#5 Better data integration: The banking app should integrate disparate and unstructured customer data to facilitate better decision making. They can do so by using robust software development tools and APIs to garner better customer visibility and provide timely product updates.

Conclusion

The software testing of banking apps ensures their scalability, functionality, usability and security across platforms and hardware configurations. Also, given the growing cybercrime threats, strengthening the security provisions and adhering to the guidelines set by regulators go a long way in creating customer trust and reducing frauds.