Are You Ready for Testing in the Cloud?

With billions of transactions processed daily across the globe, all payment industry participants must rigorously test their systems to prevent failures, fraud, and compliance issues. There can be little doubt that a robust payment testing strategy improves reliability, minimizes risk, and enhances the consumer payment experience.

For years, cloud-based testing has been positioned as the inevitable future of payment technology. In reality, not every organization is ready - or even willing - to transition their testing assets into the cloud. In fact, in some cases, organizations are even moving away from using the cloud. 

While the cloud offers flexibility and scalability, many financial institutions and payment processors struggle to maximize its value or face challenges in implementation.

“Cloud adoption should be viewed as the start of a transformative journey that fuels long-term business growth, rather than the end game or destination. What’s clear from our research is that while the technology is seen by financial institutions as a building block, some firms still consider cloud a cost-saving measure, whereas innovative disruptors leverage it to redefine their operations.”

- Ravi Khokhar, Global Head of Cloud for Financial Services at Capgemini

The good news? You don’t need to be fully in the cloud to reap its benefits. Whether your organization is committed to an on-premise setup, working within a hybrid cloud environment, or just not ready to make the big leap, there are ways to modernize your payment testing without going all-in on a cloud migration.

Modern server-based payment testing solutions, like Paragon’s Web FASTest and VirtualATM, have been built using web-based technologies that prioritize automation, access, and collaboration to help organizations streamline testing operations and turn testing into a competitive advantage. By enabling your teams to be more efficient, more accurate, and more successful, they will consistently deliver a superior payment experience to your consumers on every transaction.

Take Advantage of The Technology

Whether you choose to deploy these applications in-house on physical hardware, on virtual servers, or in one of the many cloud options available today, you can take full advantage of the many benefits these solutions offer:

Anytime, Anywhere Access

Browser-based access to the testing environment requires no desktop software to manage and maintain. Wherever your employees are based they can connect to the test platform 24x7x365. The server-based architecture also means that they always have access to the latest updates, mandates, and product enhancements every time they log in.

Centralized Management

Without a centralized database and access to shared test scripts, cards, media, results and reports, coordinating the activities of testers spread across different geographic locations can be a nightmare. Server-based tools like Web FASTest provide centralized administrative capabilities, ensuring secure control over users, roles and permissions, and access to data.

Increased Control

To be most productive developers, testers and QA resources need to effectively manage their own day-to-day activities. No matter if they are testing with an ISO 8583, ISO 20022, XML, web services or other message format, they will need the capability to copy, edit, and modify test scripts and validation criteria - sometimes down to the bit level. It is also important for each resource to have their own sandbox so that they can work independently when needed.

Improved Collaboration

While individual flexibility is important, you’ll also want to ensure your employees can collaborate effectively to meet all of your testing goals and targets. It is important that both administrators and testers can track the progress of projects and identify any specific areas that need attention or improvement. This will give your organization complete visibility into how your testers are performing, no matter where they are located.

Speed and Accuracy

Payment testing tools that provide robust automation capabilities can significantly increase the speed at which tests can be run, boosting resource productivity, expanding test coverage, improving project delivery cycles, and reducing the time required to develop new products and services. Automation also ensures that every test is performed consistently and accurately, improving quality and enabling limited resources to get more done in less time.

Application Integration

Many companies still struggle to deliver the true omnichannel payment experiences needed to satisfy sophisticated and convenience-orientated consumers who want anytime, anywhere access to financial services. Testing solutions like Web FASTest and VirtualATM have been specifically designed to easily integrate with other enterprise environments, such as settlement systems or CI/CD pipelines, via their published APIs.

Comprehensive End-to-end Testing

The primary goal of payment testing is to ensure that your products and systems are always available, secure, and easy to use, no matter when or where a consumer chooses to transact. End-to-end testing verifies that software and systems work correctly from the beginning to the end of a particular transaction flow to the end. Test tools that facilitate automated end-to-end testing help ensure a perfect consumer payment experience on every transaction.

Availability and Reliability

Performance testing and analysis are crucial activities that help validate mission-critical applications and systems ability to handle growing traffic volumes and sophisticated processing scenarios without fail. Test tools that natively support functional, regression, and performance testing scenarios in a single platform greatly simplify and streamline testing operations, further protecting your consumers, your resources, and your shareholders.

Have it Your Way

The issue of deploying any particular software application or processing environment on-prem or in the cloud is dependent on many specific factors that are unique to every organization.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach that makes sense in every case for every business. The cloud gets high marks in several categories that make it attractive for many companies to use in various scenarios:

• Cost Optimization: Cloud computing minimizes the need for upfront investments in hardware, reducing capital expenditures and operational costs.
  
  
• Scalability and Flexibility: Cloud platforms can make it easier to scale resources up or down based on changes in demand, market conditions, or business strategy.
  
  
• Increased Organizational Agility: Use of the cloud can facilitate faster deployment of applications and services, allowing businesses to bring new offerings to market quickly.
  
  
• Enhanced Security: Many cloud providers have invested heavily in cyber-security, often exceeding the protection level that individual businesses can achieve on their own.

Of course, there are no perfect solutions and many organizations perceive significant negatives with cloud deployments, such as:

• Security and Privacy: Even with its robust security protocols, the cloud is a complex web of component pieces and parts that carries an elevated level of operational risk, requiring close monitoring and management by every constituent.
  
  
• Service Interruptions: Cloud services are only as reliable as their weakest link – and there can be many links in the chain. Users may experience outages or service disruptions that are totally out of their control.
  
  
• Data Migration and Protection: Many organizations are hesitant to move large amounts of company and client data into the cloud – a complex and time-consuming exercise, requiring careful planning, execution, management, and monitoring.
  
  
• Compliance Issues: Financial services and payments are highly regulated industries with strict requirements regarding both data storage and security. Managing compliance presents its own unique set of challenges and risks.

Fortunately, the tools and technology available today give payment industry participants access to robust testing capabilities with flexible deployment options. Any time, anywhere access, automation, virtualization, increased control, improved speed and accuracy, enhanced collaboration, application integration, and end-to-end testing capabilities are all available no matter if you choose to deploy on-prem or in one of the many cloud environments that are available today.

How Paragon Can Help

For more than 30 years, the team at Paragon has been totally focused on helping the payment industry simplify and streamline payment testing operations.

Our modern, server-based and web-enabled solutions, like Web FASTest and VirtualATM have been designed to address the unique demands of the payment industry, offering robust capabilities to help organizations improve testing speed, accuracy, and efficiency.

Paragon’s testing solutions provide a wide range of features, including issuer and acquirer processing, automated regression testing, and performance testing, as well as a number of built in self-help tools and calculators that enable retailers, financial institutions, payment processors, networks, and other payment industry participants to optimize their payment testing operations.

Whether you choose to deploy your testing platform on-prem or in the cloud, Paragon is committed to delivering timely, reliable test data and providing solutions designed to maximize the return on your testing investment by improving the availability, reliability, and security of your payment systems.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Paragon can help enhance and expand your organization's payment testing operations, please contact us today!