QA for financial applications: 4 reasons why it is a must-have
The pandemic has led to the rapid adoption of new technologies in the banking industry. According to the State of Fintech and Crypto Apps Report 2022, in the 1st quarter of 2022, users downloaded about 1.74 billion financial software apps.
To meet clients’ expectations and improve their digital experience, providers need to maintain a high level of security, stability, and integrity within their mobile and web software. To achieve this, QA is crucial.
Case in point: between 2010 and 2015 hundreds of Wells Fargo Bank’s customers were unable to buy homes because of a software bug that incorrectly denied 870 loans and modification requests. As a result, the company had to allocate $8 million to compensate end users affected by the failure. This example shows that the nature of glitches in eBanking products is devastating to both businesses and their clients.
We want to warn you and propose to take a closer look at 4 reasons why quality assurance is mission-critical for your services and solutions.
Reason #1. Safeguarding confidential data
The financial sector is one of the three industries most susceptible to cyberattacks (along with government and healthcare), having suffered 1,829 incidents in 2022.
Source: Statista
Every year hackers discover more sophisticated ways to penetrate systems, therefore, banks should integrate security operations into SDLC and perform penetration testing to detect defects related to software fragility.
Let’s see how a1qa’s specialists helped a well-known bank to ensure high reliability and safety of numerous solutions. The QA team started with an assessment based on OWASP API Security Top 10 Project and OWASP Web Security Testing Guide, involving the list of the most recent severe vulnerabilities. They thoroughly tested injections, broken authentication and authorization, security misconfiguration, excessive data exposure, and session management issues.
The next stage included penetration tests to reveal system loopholes and prevent their exploitation by hackers. Thus, they identified a number of flaws that could allow cyber criminals to gain access to a list of users, their passwords, and accounts as well as steal access tokens.
Reason #2. Guaranteeing high quality within cloud-based software
Banks are progressively transferring their apps to the cloud, but face rugged data migrations, server interruptions, and security issues.
As the data migration process involves vast volumes of sensitive information, companies can simplify and speed up its testing with automation. Automated tests allow banks to simulate complex data transfers and validate that all customer accounts, transactions, and records are seamlessly moved from one system to another. In the end, they have high data accuracy and reduce the risk of its corruption or losses.
Reason #3. Excluding server downtime
The last thing you want is the download speed of your IT product to suddenly decrease― this is one of the common reasons why consumers abandon apps (1 in 2 users don’t wait for more than 6 seconds for page loading).
During a project with a similar issue, a1qa’s professionals introduced load validation to guarantee smooth system functioning with the target load for an extended period as well as stress testing to determine the upper limit of the solution capacity. They also analyzed software dependence on the number of concurrent users, requests, and transactions. It helped the client expand operational volume and provide first-rate services to its customers.
Reason #4. Adjusting software for various platforms
In the third quarter of 2023, 70.5% of mobile device users were utilizing Android, 28.8% ― iOS, and 0.7% ― other platforms. As the range of phones, operating systems, and browsers is endless, it’s hard to predict which ones consumers will use. To provide a seamless experience and ensure that the banking solution fits a wide variety of devices, we advise our clients to leverage compatibility testing.
In such cases, our experts collect statistics from a target region for desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. Based on the information gathered, they create a compatibility matrix that reflects the most used browsers and platforms and then test financial apps across them.
All in all
In today’s rapidly evolving financial landscape, quality assurance stands as the cornerstone of excellence in the quality of banking IT products for several compelling reasons.
Firstly, it helps protect sensitive and confidential data from potential security breaches. Secondly, it ensures that cloud-based software functions flawlessly and at the highest quality. Thirdly, QA plays a pivotal role in eliminating server downtime as uninterrupted operation is paramount. And lastly, by relying on QA, companies can adjust their apps for multiple platforms, catering to the diverse needs of their end users.
For professional QA support to ensure first-rate quality within your banking software, feel free to contact a1qa’s team.
