Payment Gateway Testing: Top Tips to Secure Your Payment Gateway

Do you also have the talent to make some future predictions? If yes, then you can certainly foresee a massive rise in digital payments, can’t you?

A global average of consumers who have shopped online in the year 2020 is 86% of the world population, stated in a recent report by Statista 2021. A rise in online shopping causes a rational surge in the digital payment process as well. And to keep your business payment process secure and uptight, a need for payment gateway testing arises. It not just secures the process but also focuses on gaining customers’ trust and satisfaction, which works crucial for businesses of any kind and scale.

Moreover, in the wake of the pandemic, customers are resorting to contactless payment methods that have reduced cash usage and increased use of online payment options. Statista Market Outlook 2021 states that the global transaction value of digital payments in 2020 was $5.2 trillion, this indicates how much is the world dependent on online payments. Digital payments have also helped users maintain the social distancing protocols and they feel safer using the no-touch UPI scanning methods that do not involve any card swipes or cash exchanges.

What is a Payment Gateway or Payment Processor?

A payment gateway or payment processor is a third-party through which the merchant outsources the transactional operations of its business. A payment gateway helps the merchant by managing the transactions made by customers. A customer can make the payment through various means, i.e., credit card/debit card or e-wallets. Thus, a payment gateway acts as a mediator and keeps a check on the details received for payment and then sends it to the issuing bank (customers’ bank) to verify. Once it is done, it then sends the information to the acquiring bank (merchant’s bank), and thus the payment is made.

When a consumer places the order, he/she opts to pay for the order digitally to have a contactless delivery. Therefore, the website/application directs the customer to a payment processor that asks for the payment details. If the issuing bank rejects the details by any chance, then a failure response code is sent to the acquiring bank and then to the payment processor that further displays a failed transaction code to the customer.

Types of Payment Gateways/Payment Processors:

Many e-commerce businesses are resorting to payment gateways for the transactional process; there are different types of gateways that you can choose as per the need of your application/website. Here are three different types of gateways available:

1. Hosted payment gateways:

When a customer tries to make payment digitally, these gateways take the customers away from the website to a gateway link to share the payment details. Once the transaction is successful; it then brings them back to the website. Such gateways are known as hosted payment gateways, for example, PayPal.

2. Self-hosted payment gateways:

In these gateways, the customer does not leave the website but shares the payment details on the website itself. These gateways make the process easier and faster. One of the examples of a self-hosted payment gateway is e-Way.

3. API hosted payment gateways:

An API is an Application Programming Interface. When an API hosts a payment gateway, customers can directly enter their card details on the check-out page of the website/application to make the payment, and the transaction is processed through the API.

How does testing a payment gateway help your business?

When a customer shops directly from the store, he/she can offer to swipe a card. Now, to fulfill such a transaction, the merchant will require a POS (Point of Sale) machine that can request from the issuing bank to verify and share if the payment can be made or not to the acquiring bank. Thus, performing POS testing is crucial to ensure that there is no loss of sensitive data and to enable successful transactions.

Similarly, for any e-commerce business, it is essential need to integrate a payment gateway system. A system that is entirely secure, super-fast and offers great UX. And not to forget a system that does not affect your application/website. To make sure that a payment gateway does full justice to your needs and keeps the customers satisfied and secured, it is important to have a quality assurance test of your system. Hence, payment gateway testing is vital for any business.

The four types of testing to perform on payment gateways-

QA tests should be performed on all types of payment gateways to provide the customers with a smooth buying experience and an easy check-out. Following are the testing techniques to consider for any payment gateway integration:

1. Functional Testing:

Functional testing is performed to check the functionality of the payment process and see if the calculations are going right with pricing, discounts, taxes and more. Such type of testing is performed for gateways that are new or less reliable. While for gateways that are established, functional testing can be skipped.

2. Integration Testing:

This type of testing is performed while integrating a payment gateway to your application/website to see if your application is working properly and acting in the right way after integrating the payment gateway. A testing team should verify every phase of purchase from Buy Now to making the final payment.

Integration testing can help you verify if the chosen payment gateway is right for your business.

3. Performance Testing:

To do performance testing, the QA team performs multiple trial payment transactions to check if the application is working fine when large numbers of individuals are making payments simultaneously. This type of testing practice helps save your business from any bad customer experience and avoid any payment issues.

4. Security Testing:

At this phase of testing, the QA team must make sure that all the payment details which the customer enters are secured and appropriately encrypted. Security testing should be done on priority to avoid loss or corruption of sensitive customer data.

A testing checklist guide for Payment Gateways:

• Set up a payment gateway sandbox for inspection.
• Collect the test debit/credit cards for various transactional practices.
• Evaluate the application performance when a transaction is successful.
• Check if there is a notification or message for a failure or successful transaction.
• Verify different fraud prevention or security settings.
• Keep a check if the refund amount is equal to the transaction amount.
• Verify for the payment gateway currency integration.

In the end:

Integrating a payment gateway is an essential step for your business. And testing will help your business secure any payment gateway and save your business from any fraudulent activities. An unsuccessful experience for any customer while making a transaction could affect your business’s sales. Hence, outsourcing your payment gateway testing to a reliable quality assurance is the rightful need for any business. It will save costs for your business in the long run and assist in providing better customer experience.

This Article is originally published at Medium.com Payment Gateway Testing: Top Tips to Secure Your Payment Gateway

Anuj works for Qualitest Group- the world's largest testing services company.Qualitest’s global service delivery platform includes the United States, Israel, UK, India, Portugal and Romania.