Testing Payment Gateways Is Important

The rise and subsequent mainstream popularity of e-commerce have meant that people have slowly integrated online transactions into their lives. This integration has been one that has compounded over the last two decades into more and more seamless ways. Today, the likes of PayPal and other payment gateways seem important parts of the online experience. These payment gateways are responsible for all the transactions that occur online through a user’s credit or debit card information.

A successful transaction occurs when the merchant receives his/her payment after the buyer’s payment is processed from the card in use to the merchant’s bank account. A host of payment gateway options make the entire transactional process simple and seamless, but issues can still arise. Your QA can track down and resolve most of these issues with the help of defect management tools before a payment gateway goes into deployment. 

Why testing payment gateways is crucial before deployment?

To try and lessen the burden in buying and selling procedure, payment gateways almost always need to be securely tested. It is the PoS (Point of Sale) machines that decide if a transaction went through or not, every time a customer uses their card. However, while executing online transactions, a comparable system is required which may approve or disapprove the transaction instantly and make the web payment procedure smooth. Needless to say, this can cause problems for the merchant if any of these entities do not work.

The job of the QA tester here is to check the system using software testing and confirm the payment system is in a position to finish the payment cycle (proceeding transactions from the web store, record and to authenticate refunds) are working fine.

Helpful Tips to Test Payment Gateways with Software Testing:

Check for an available isolated environment

Search for an isolated environment (for trial and examining purposes) that will be used for the Payment Gateway; it must be tested or instigated. Such an environment helps and provides the testers that extra flexibility to customize the tool and test in-depth as needed.

Pick an option that allows issue resolution

The customer must be prompted and notified if there has been an issue in a transaction or the payment has failed for whatever reason. This is typically done by setting an error message that is sent to the customer. In order to raise and improve customer experience, be sure to test all the notifications that your payment gateway may send to your customers. 

End-to-end Testing

You must confirm that end-to-end transaction testing is completed before the deployment cycle begins using software testing. Additionally, it is best to determine the common bugs that may be connected to data capture and data flow from the apps to your payment gateway.

Post-development verification

Business owners are recommended to start a live payment processor account and initiate their Merchant ID for post-development verification. After the setting up process is completed, regression automation testing can begin on the payment processor. This step should ideally be done before the application and payment processor integration is available for public release.

Perhaps the most important step for any eCommerce platform is the module of the payment processor that's intended to efficiently accept payments from its users. Hence, it's important to check this factor carefully. User experiences are often destructively affected if any setup is missed or any gap is left within the sales or transactions between the vendor and therefore the buyer.

Enterprises thus have to prepare for the test environments and formulate a separate software testing strategy for both the test environment and live or post-production release environment. There are multiple things that eventually make up a part of a comprehensive test strategy. Once the initial level testing is properly organized and intercepted, only then you'll drill deeper and recognize crucial areas of testing facilitated by your own unique requirements.