Digital Payment Gateway Testing

Digital payment gateway testing is done to ensure that a system provides a good customer experience during online purchases and transactions. The purpose of this testing is to ensure the performance, security, and reliability of a payment gateway by encrypting and securing the payment details between the user and merchant.

It is important to test every payment gateway in order to provide seamless and secure online transactions. The online transaction process should be so smooth from the customer’s point of view that the user only needs to click the button and get the transaction done without interruption in a second.

However, from the merchant’s point of view, he needs to ensure that the complete transaction process is working fine along with its sub-components. The testing of payment gateway helps merchants to determine that the chosen system is, in fact, the best fit for the customers.

Types of Payment Gateways

Almost every business has moved from the traditional payment process of direct bank transfers to digital payment gateways. The main reason for this is the security, instant payment options, and credibility for merchants offered by payment gateways. So let’s take a look at the types of payment gateways:

• Self-hosted: In some web applications when the user clicks the ‘pay now’ button, the application redirects the user to the payment service provider page. He can fill in all details, and after that, once the payment is done, the user will be redirected to the website page. It provides a good customer experience as the entire transaction occurs in one place. Because of its customizable flow, the merchant gains complete control over the payment process. Shopify Payments, QuickBooks Commerce’s B2B Payments (powered by Stripe) are some examples of self-hosted payment gateways.
• Shared/Non-hosted: For shared gateways, a user is redirected to the payment page which is configured within the e-commerce website. In this type of gateway, you can control payment from start to finish.

Use This Payment Gateways Testing Checklist Before You Begin the Testing of Application

Here’s a complete checklist that QA engineers should follow before getting starting payment gateway application testing:

• Gather proper test data for the credit card number
• You must be aware of messages for successful/unsuccessful transaction
• Verify amount related information is not passed through query string, variable or session
• Know the language and currency per location of the customer
• Make sure you are aware of user redirection after completion of a successful transaction
• Ensure the correct message appears when a payment session ends
• Have a basic idea of the backend while the payment gets processed
• Ensure correct message appears when the payment gateway stops responding
• Keep a check if all payment options like net banking, wallets, debit/credit cards, and others are accepted
• Ensure that data regarding error codes have been documented
• Be aware of fraud preventive measures
• Ensure you have test cases to check currency integration

How To Test the Functionality of Payment Gateway?

Following are some of the important testing strategies that QA experts implement for testing the functionality of digital payment gateway:

• Integration Testing: This testing covers the verification of the merchant’s website/online store’s integration with the payment gateway. With the help of integration testing, we will be able to determine the connection of the payment gateway to the correct bank and seamless communication from the banking server. Also, we will be able to check the transaction process for the said amount of money and currency format and ensure that the transaction is successful.
• Automated and Manual Testing: Find out which test cases are best suited for automation and which ones require manual testing.
• Prioritize User Experience: See how the server can handle multiple payments processing at once. Verify common triggers that can impact the end customers’ experience.
• Performance Testing: This testing is extremely essential for the application to deliver smooth performance. The payment gateway integrated with the application should achieve the desired performance benchmarks. You can verify this by increasing the user's count above a threshold level to check the performance of the payment gateway. Also, perform stress testing at every step, including gateways and devices across multiple platforms.
• Security Testing: This testing should be taken very seriously as it is very important to keep all the sensitive information secure and safe from cyber-attacks. Check if the payment details entered by the user are encrypted properly. PCI DSS compliance tests are validation of a secure network, verifying that the encryption and decryption process is tested across the networks.
• Database Testing: This testing is one of the important aspects of the online transaction process. It is very important that being a merchant, you should assure your customers that whatever details a user will provide to you are secure. Database testing incorporates the proper format of information stored in the database.
• Payment Gateway Verification End-to-End: Testing of various payment gateways from the device to the merchant, merchant to the issuer, and the banks, to ensure end-to-end encrypted transmission.
• Bank Statement Reconciliation: This is a final critical step of testing just to ensure that you are receiving funds for all the payments that were eligible in the current settlement cycle. We can validate this by checking the money being credited to your bank account.

Test Case Scenario for Payment Gateway

Before launching any software or mobile application into the market, you need to ensure that it meets the user's requirements. It should not possess any functionality issues, have a good user interface, and secure. The same goes for payment gateway applications.

In order to ensure that the payment gateway is bugfree and follows all security protocols, here’s a list of test case scenarios that testing engineers should follow:

• Test the scenario when the payment gateway stops responding during payment or if the session ends during the payment process.
• Verify error messages during payment failure.
• Verify sensitive information like credit card details is stored in an encrypted format.
• Verify success code is sent to the application for successful payment and a confirmation page is shown to the user.
• Validate the mandatory fields.
• Verify the functioning of the gateway when language and currency are changed.
• Check the transaction flow when a customer voluntarily cancels the transaction in the middle.
• Ensure the same amount is refunded to the user in case of a cancellation.
• Verify debit card and credit card options show the default drop-down menu.
• Verify the double payment scenario done by the user and also validate the transaction flow using the blocked card.
• Verify the console logs during end-to-end transactions and report the console errors that are found.
• Check that the transaction is done on a secure channel, payment pages must be HTTPS.
• Verify the following combinations, valid card number, valid expiry date, invalid CVV number, valid card number, invalid expiry date, valid CVV number, invalid card number, valid expiry date, valid CVV number.
• Verify the UI for the payment gateway. Users must ensure that all the labels and boxes are visible, payment gateway company logo or name, the credit card number is masked or not. Also, all the payment options are visible, and the color scheme matches the specifications.
• Verify OTP reaches only the verified number linked with the card or user transaction gets canceled if the wrong OTP is entered. Also, users should get notified if the wrong OTP is entered.
• Time taken to reach the payment gateway from the website page should be the same as specified.

Tools Used While Doing Digital Payment Gateway Testing

Testing can’t be done without having a proper tool, and a single tool cannot perform all the tests. You need to have a set of the right QA tools that would make your work easy and faster. In order to ensure that the digital payment software works properly, without encountering critical errors or bugs, payment gateway testing is necessary. Here are some of the tools that testing experts use for analyzing the digital payment gateway software:

• t³ V7: This tool provides simulation to create a dummy environment for gateway testing. The admin has full control over simulation software that allows him/her to test any type of data. Users can test data and test cases with a text editor. With test runner functionality, users can perform a regression test to create detailed reports after analyzing. t³ V7 can emulate fast payment options and help in testing payment gateways faster.
• JMeter: It is used for performance, load, and stress testing. It is a Java-based open-source tool, which you can use on any platform that has a Java virtual machine: Windows, macOS, Linux. It enables rapid, easy, and smooth testing of APIs in payment gateways. JMeter sends the HTTP requests the same as a real browser does and receives the same response. It allows users to make sure that the test case behaves exactly as a real user does according to the network activity perspective.

In order to ensure that digital payments are firmly integrated into the software, it is important to employ robust software testing techniques. While verifying the payment gateway of any website, testing is very important at every stage of the application life cycle to make sure that software runs flawlessly in real-time.

To ensure the performance, security, and reliability of a payment gateway, you need to partner with a reliable QA testing company like QASource. QASource believes in quality and our engineering practices can help in providing a seamless and secure customer experience. Our engineering team is well versed with payment gateway testing techniques as they are doing it for many customers.