A Comprehensive Overview of Payment Gateway Testing

When a customer is ready to purchase, the final step is the payment process. To deliver frictionless payment experiences, companies must test their payment gateways extensively. Even minor glitches can cause cart abandonment and reduce sales volume. Payment gateways cannot afford anything less than perfect reliability, as other aspects of software may enjoy the leeway to go live while minor issues are resolved.

PayPal, Stripe, Amazon pay, and third-party payment processors are some of the most popular payment gateways. Is payment testing really that critical to the end-user experience? (That’s right… it does.)

What is payment gateway testing?

The purpose of payment testing is to ensure that a payment system or application is functional and secure. A variety of components of the payment system can be tested, including the payment gateway, payment processors, and payment methods.

Payment testing can also contain testing for compliance with industry regulations and criteria and for vulnerabilities and potential security breaches. Payments testing strives to assure that the payment system is reliable, secure, and compliant while delivering an intuitive experience for users.

Payment testing entails thoroughly testing each step of an order transaction, starting with the payment and shipping information and continuing through the transmission of payment information to merchant accounts, the transfer of funds, and the completion of the payment and shipping orders. Somewhere along this chain, payments could go through due to human or technical problems. For instance, if a consumer inputs the incorrect expiration date, the transaction will fail. Similar to the last example, payments might be delayed or stopped entirely if an API call fails to establish a connection with a financial institution or transaction information is lost between page loads.

Here’s an overview of the transaction flow for a payment gateway:

• Customer initiates a payment: The customer places an order on a merchant’s website and selects a payment option.
• Payment data is collected: The payment gateway collects the payment information from the customer, such as credit/debit card details, billing address, and shipping address.
• Payment data is encrypted: The payment gateway encrypts the payment data to ensure that it is secure during transmission.
• Payment data is sent to the payment processor: The payment gateway sends the payment data to the payment processor for authorization.
• Payment processor verifies the transaction: The payment processor verifies the transaction by checking the customer’s account details and ensuring that there are sufficient funds available.
• The transaction is approved or declined: The payment processor sends a response to the payment gateway indicating whether the transaction is approved or declined.
• Payment gateway sends a response to the merchant: The payment gateway sends a response to the merchant’s website indicating whether the transaction was successful or not.
• Payment gateway settles the transaction: If the transaction is successful, the payment gateway settles the payment with the merchant’s bank account, minus any fees charged by the payment gateway.
• Funds are transferred to the merchant’s bank account: The payment gateway transfers the funds to the merchant’s bank account, usually within a few business days.

Establishing a comprehensive testing strategy for software payments

A comprehensive approach to software testing is necessary to develop an effective testing strategy for payment gateways. In order to evaluate performance and decide where additional or better capabilities are required, testing payment gateways use various software tests against a set of specified parameters. To ensure that connections and communication pathways are functioning, testing must simulate each step of the payment process. Cross-functionality must be tested using test cases such as:

• Functionality: Verifies that the payment gateway is correctly interacting with the system of the merchant and accurately handling transactions.
• Integration: Verify that any newly introduced services, methods of payment, or features are compatible with the current app.
• Performance: Checks if the app performs equally well on all platforms and device configurations and measures the number of simultaneous transactions from most users.
• Usability: Testing the payment gateway’s usability to make sure it is well-designed and completely functional.
• Location: Provides instances of region-based testing to determine whether the payment gateway can handle different consumer regions and determine the necessary specs (sales taxes, global shipping fees, import tax).
• Localization: International customers can pay in their home currency thanks to localization.
• Security: Checks the security of financial and personally identifiable information. Strong encryption must be used during the transaction to securely communicate all bank account and credit card details.
• Compatibility: The ability of the payment gateway to manage transactions across several platforms is ensured through compatibility.

Use cases for testing Payment Gateways

The whole payment system must be thoroughly examined. These use cases show how difficult it is to guarantee successful financial transactions across numerous payment platforms.

• Validate card numbers: Ensure that credit card numbers may be viewed, validated, and handled. Create test cases that answer concerns like, “Can the payment gateway handle credit and debit card data from different financial institutions and nations?”
• Check currency and exchange rates: Make sure international buyers are successful and charged fairly. Does the software accurately compute shipping costs, local taxes, and exchange rates?
• Achieve accurate processing time: Verify the payment gateway’s operation when several consumers are checking out simultaneously. Changes in processing time? What occurs if a customer’s cart runs out of time?
• Check security measures: Is the card information hidden? Does the customer initiate the transaction using 2FA? Is your website safe?
• Confirm successful payment confirmation: Ensure sure APIs provide the client, financial institution, and internal applications with accurate payment confirmation. Does payment confirmation initiate auto-pay or auto-renewal in the same thread?
• Payment failures and following steps: In the event of a payment failure, the appropriate actions should be done, including contacting users and removing orders from fulfillment systems.

Also Read: Validation And Verification In Software Testing: When Should They Be Used?

Conclusion

Payment gateway testing is a critical part of ensuring the security, reliability, and effectiveness of online payment transactions. With the increasing number of cyber-attacks and data breaches, payment gateway testing has become an essential component of any payment gateway system.

Various payment gateway testing techniques, such as functional testing, performance testing, security testing, usability testing, and compatibility testing, are used to ensure the quality and security of payment gateway systems.

Therefore, payment gateway testing should not be overlooked or underestimated, as it can have a significant impact on customer trust, revenue, and brand reputation. Investing in payment gateway testing will ultimately pay off in the long run, as it ensures the security and reliability of your payment gateway system.

When it comes to QA, nothing is better than having the correct people in charge. That’s why we make sure that everyone on our team is qualified and accredited on some of the industry’s best practices. 

At TestUnity we have an expert team of QA Engineers. This enables us to give our clients the support they require to make sure that their software hits the market in the right circumstances. Contact us for a free consultation and see why TestUnity’s QA approach is the best choice for your software.

TestUnity

Testunity is a SaaS-based technology platform driven by a vast community of testers & QAs spread around the world, powered by technology & testing experts to create the dedicated testing hub. Which is capable of providing almost all kind of testing services for almost all the platforms exists in software word.