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Dispatching the Demanding Dozen:
Preparing Your Testers to Face The Financial Industry’s Top 12 Challenges
A Demanding Dozen: The Top 12 Challenges Increasing the Test Burden of Your QA, Regression, and Load Testing Staff
FIs and processors are likely to face one or more of these challenges in the coming year, and the changes associated with each challenge demand systematic, efficient, and timely testing.
Table 1 The Top 12 Challenges Increasing the Test Burden of Your QA, Regression, and Load Testing Staff
| Current or Anticipated Changes |
Ramifications |
Testing Considerations |
| Globalization
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More countries are entering the global payments arena. FIs must negotiate cross-border payments and money transfers. European countries begin their migration toward the Single European Payments Area (SEPA).
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Must acquire or build test cases that specifically
test cross-border payments/transfers, emerging standards (such as SEPA), and emerging networks.
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| Rapidly increasing transaction volumes
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Global Insight Inc.i reports that electronic payment transactions, currently at 210 billion, will double by the end of the decade.
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Must conduct stress testing of online systems as well as core and settlement systems to prove that ePayments systems can handle projected transaction volumes.
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| Changing mix of payment instruments and transactions
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Traditional ATM and credit card transactions are supplemented by transactions from contactless cards (such as Radio Frequency Identification [RFID] cards), prepaid cards (such as NetSpend), stored value cards, and other non-traditional payment instruments.
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Must acquire or build specific test cases for each new payment delivery channel and payment instrument supported.
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| Regulatory pressure
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Regulations mandate that FIs adapt to new technologies (such as EMV, Triple DES and RSA security), or institute new procedures (as does BaseI II and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act).
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Must acquire or build specific test cases for the new technologies. Must adopt documentation and reporting procedures that use tool-supplied data to prove compliance with current regulations.
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