Digital Transactions: Why Effective Payment Testing is so Critical to Your Bottom Line

Capgemini recently released the latest edition of its World Payments Report for 2025. This is the 20^th consecutive year that Capgemini has been reporting on the state of the payment industry and the various issues and trends that affect all industry participants. 

The opening few lines from the report’s executive summary state: “The global payments industry is undergoing a seismic shift as consumers increasingly adopt digital transactions over cash. As consumers increasingly favor digital payments over paper and coins, non-cash transactions are surging. In 2023, non-cash transaction volumes worldwide reached nearly 1,411 billion and forecasts indicate that the number will grow to approximately 2,838 billion by 2028 – a 15% compound annual growth rate.” 

While the opportunities for well-positioned financial services companies seem endless, for many there is additional work to be done in order to take full advantage of this digital trend. 

The folks at Capgemini have also just published their World Quality Report, which analyzes global application quality and testing trends for various industry segments - including financial services. 

From the World Quality Report executive summary, the authors note: “There is a clear need to align Quality Engineering metrics with business outcomes and showcase the strategic value of quality initiatives to drive meaningful change. Currently, many organizations are struggling to implement comprehensive test strategies that ensure optimized coverage. As businesses rely more heavily on automated, data-driven decision-making, the quality of data is increasingly becoming a critical focus area.”

These two statements help to solidify something we’ve known for a while. The payments industry is moving towards a world of digital transactions, and a robust payment testing strategy is a key part of the race to delight customers and improve profit margins.   

Make Payment Testing Your Competitive Advantage

It is important for payment industry participants to recognize the correlation between testing efficiency and profitable growth. In order to take full advantage of the continued increase in digital transactions, satisfy evolving consumer expectations, and meet aggressive shareholder targets, financial services providers must continue to invest in modern payment testing solutions.  

As the payment industry continues its dynamic, disruptive, and sometimes difficult evolution into the future, forward-thinking organizations that can automate, integrate, and optimize their payment testing operations will be best positioned to win the day. 

Given the vital role that testing and certification play in keeping the payment industry secure, a comprehensive testing strategy is necessary for any organization that wants to increase efficiency, improve quality, and speed time-to-market for innovative new products and services. 

Here are 10 ways that modern testing tools - like Paragon’s Web FASTest and VirtualATM solutions - can help payment processors today and into the future: 

For a variety of reasons, financial services companies of all sizes have increasingly spread their operations across time zones and geographies, making it progressively more difficult for resources to stay connected. 

Enabling 24x7 remote access to a centralized testing environment allows users to work on specific projects or in dedicated sandbox environments anytime, and from anywhere. Providing the connectivity staff need and the flexibility they want to manage their time effectively, greatly increases both employee productivity and job satisfaction. 

Payment testing traditionally requires a lot of patience. Scheduling test sessions with processing partners can be difficult and time-consuming, especially when test results are not immediately available. This wait-and-see approach often stretches out for weeks and months, delaying processes, projects, and products.  

How much better would it be if testers could get immediate feedback on their tests so that they could take immediate action? 

Here at Paragon, our Web FASTest solution can be configured to send or receive fully formatted messages (issuer or acquirer processing) and provides immediate feedback and validation. Any formatting or data errors, (including any issues with EMV tags or cryptography) are immediately highlighted so that the necessary corrections can be made. No more waiting. 

Testing consistency and accuracy are critical factors in delivering a superior customer experience on every transaction. Creating and using a standard library of tests that can be run and rerun the same way every time reduces the risk of human error, as well as the variability that comes with manual testing. 

Effective testing must be part of a multi-layered approach to ensure that all processing components, including the hardware, the software, the network, authorization systems, and internal processes, all work together to make the channel as secure as possible. For credit and debit card transactions, simulators that can correctly construct and process EMV contact and contactless messages are essential. 

While automation cannot totally replace manual testing, automating every test that can possibly be automated will significantly boost your testing productivity. Automating the 20 percent of transactions that drive 80 percent of your volume will significantly improve the efficiency of your testing operations, enabling your resources to expand test coverage, improve quality, and focus on higher-value activities. 

It is critically important that all resources associated with payment testing operations have quick and easy access to current and accurate data associated with required processing specifications and mandates. 

A centralized database where test data can be easily imported, exported, filtered, and shared becomes a “single source of truth”, ensuring that everyone in your testing operations has access to the information they need, when they need it in order to enhance collaboration, improve quality and increase execution speed. 

In addition to helping clients be positive that they can process payment messages and transactions correctly, it is also necessary to ensure that all systems respond properly when transactions fail. 

Modern testing tools should provide flexible editing capabilities that enable users to deliberately inject invalid, incorrect, or missing data - including EMV card and tag data - into transaction flows. This helps organizations to proactively identify and address potential issues or bottlenecks before they cause applications or systems to fail. 

Many organizations struggle to deliver the true omnichannel banking experience needed to capture and retain consumers who want anytime, anywhere access to financial products and services. Success here requires that payment testing for all retail payment channels - e.g., POS, ATM, mobile, e-commerce, etc. - be fully integrated across the enterprise - something that is difficult to accomplish without modern test tools and technology. 

Regularly testing the performance characteristics of all processing scenarios, including credit and debit, mag stripe, EMV contact and contactless, as well as e-commerce and ATM transactions, helps organizations to identify and correct issues before they cause a system to fail or have a negative impact on a consumer payment experience. 

Virtually every organization wants and needs to minimize operational costs, while not compromising their ability to deliver an exceptional customer experience. By expanding the use of modern technologies, such as cloud computing, automation, continuous delivery, and APIs, payment industry participants can optimize their testing operations 

Seize The Day with Modern Payment Testing Solutions

To successfully navigate the ongoing business challenges presented by the continued growth in digital transactions - such as EMV contactless, alternative payment methods, and satisfy increasingly sophisticated consumers - any organization that issues or accepts credit and debit cards must continue to prioritize and invest in payment testing solutions that help streamline their operations, improve quality, increase productivity and reduce costs. 

Investing in modern payment testing solutions that prioritize automation, access, and collaboration will help your organization navigate these challenging times 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. 

Are you interested in learning more about how your organization can upgrade its payment testing capabilities?  

The Paragon team of experts is available to review your testing requirements and discuss how our tools and simulators can help you improve quality, increase productivity, and speed time to market for the innovative new products and services your customers are looking for.