The Power of Testing: The Key to Avoiding a Payment ‘Glitch’

The etymology of “glitch” as we know the term today is itself a bit fuzzy. Many accounts suggest the term originated from the Yiddish words glitsh meaning “slippery place” or glitshn which means “to slide, or glide”. 

The first common usage of glitch appears to have come in the 1940s during the Golden Age of Radio when announcers used the term to describe a mistake made during a live broadcast, such as omitting or sliding over a word.

Moving forward a few years, glitches grew to describe unpredictable and transient electronic or mechanical behavior often associated with the technology in use at the time, such as a brief, unexpected surge of electrical current affecting vacuum tubes that can hum or pop and carbon microphones that hiss and crackle.

In 1962, newly minted NASA astronaut John Glen described glitch thusly in his book on the US Space Program Into Orbit: “…a glitch is a spike or change in voltage in an electrical circuit which takes place when the circuit suddenly has a new load put on it." 

Today, in 2024 an AI search of the internet provides the following definition of glitch: 

Glitch: A minor, temporary issue that prevents something from working as it should. Glitches are unexpected and rare and can be caused by things like power hiccups. Rebooting a system can often fix a glitch.  

For comparison purposes, the AI search engine provides a much different definition for a software bug: 

Bug: A software bug is an error, defect, or flaw in a computer program that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result. 

It may also be interesting to note that the widely recognized GeeksforGeeks website essay “Software Testing – Bug vs Defect vs Error vs Fault vs Failure” provides a detailed definition and analysis of bug and several synonyms, but glitch is nowhere to be found. 

Glitch vs Bug: Accuracy is Important & Necessary 

Unfortunately, it seems that in recent years there has been a noticeable shift in the terminology used to describe software errors. Terms commonly used by software developers, like "bug" and "defect" have been increasingly replaced by glitch.  

Let's take a look at two recent and very high-profile incidents that help to illustrate this point. 

The CrowdStrike Failure

The CrowdStrike event from July 2024 is an interesting example of how glitch is being used (incorrectly) as interchangeable with terms like “bug” or "defect”. Multiple news headlines repeatedly referred to the incident as a glitch.  

However, the incident report published online by CrowdStrike specifically avoids that term and uses much more technical language, stating that the incident was “Due to a bug in the Content Validator, one of the two Template Instances passed validation despite containing problematic content data”.  

The main difference in the terminology used here may be based on the desire of news media to appeal to the broadest possible audience, as opposed to the need for CrowdStrike to respond to the much more technically sophisticated resources of its corporate constituents. 

You can learn more about the CrowdStrike event in our blog, Outage Outrage: Lessons from the CrowdStrike Failure.

The Chase Bank TikTok ATM Glitch 

The Chase Bank TikTok ATM Glitch from early September 2024 has been almost universally described from the very beginning as a glitch, both by the press and on social media. This is interesting since no one outside of Chase really knows what happened here.  

Other than a Chase spokesperson saying: “We are aware of this incident, and it has been addressed”, no specific details of what caused or corrected the issue have been provided by the bank. Several websites have suggested that similar to the CrowdStrike outage, the Chase glitch appears to be the result of a software update gone wrong.  

However, because of the security issues involved here – and the fact that anyone who exploited the Chase glitch has effectively committed check fraud - it is not likely that the general public will ever see more detail on this incident. 

Following are two more recent events that have been categorized quite differently in the press and on social media. 

1. On September 30, 204, US mobile carrier Verizon suffered a significant service interruption that was widely reported as a “massive outage” affecting customers all across the USA. There appear to be no references by Verizon or by the media to this hours-long disruption being a “glitch”. 
   
   
2. Conversely, on October 2, 2024, when thousands of Bank of America customers were unable to access their accounts or were incorrectly shown zero balances in what appeared to be another significant service interruption, both the press and the bank were more comfortable describing the incident as a glitch. 
   
   

While the choice of words here might seem insignificant (you say tomato, I say tomato), accurate terminology is crucial for effective communication and problem-solving in the payments industry. Using "glitch" to describe software defects only serves to obscure the underlying causes of any issues and potentially hinder efforts to address them. 

Whatever we call them, all of these incidents highlight the real-world consequences of software errors - which can range from minor inconveniences to global meltdowns affecting millions and costing billions – and demonstrate the critical role of payment testing in preventing software failures.

Testing: The Key to Preventing Costly Outages

The increasing frequency and size of these outages highlight the risks associated with the complex, interconnected, and interdependent IT world that businesses operate in today and emphasize the need for every organization to accept responsibility for protecting itself and its shareholders to the greatest degree possible. 

The best way to prevent bugs, defects, or glitches and protect your company, your customers, and your shareholders is by rigorously testing everything. Specifically, a comprehensive approach to testing will help ensure that you can identify and eliminate potential issues before they impact your customers. 

With more than 30 years of experience partnering with payment industry leaders, the team at Paragon Application Systems understands the critical role that testing plays in protecting your resources, your customers, and your shareholders. By working with Paragon, you’ll gain access to industry expertise, as well as a proven track record, and a corporate commitment to providing exceptional customer support.

Our testing tools and simulators are designed to give our clients total control over their payment testing operations, delivering the speed, productivity, and flexibility needed to keep mission-critical systems and applications operating at peak efficiency and helping to prevent embarrassing and expensive incidents from making the evening news. 

The team at Paragon is available to review your current payment testing strategy and provide advice and guidance on how to optimize your testing capabilities and adopt industry best practices that will help prevent unwanted outages. Contact us today to learn more.