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Who we are, what we build, and who we build it for.
Paragon helps banks, payment networks, processors and ATM operators make sure new products, technology upgrades, card scheme mandates, and certifications work as intended before a single cardholder ever sees them.
For more than 30 years, we've built testing platforms and simulators that recreate real-world payment and ATM activity in a safe, controlled environment. Issuers, acquirers, networks, processors, ATM deployers, gateways, retailers and fintechs all use our solutions to create, run and validate transactions. That lets them identify and correct defects early, then go live with confidence.
Paragon is privately owned and fully independent. No ATM manufacturer, payment network or host processor owns us. So our tools are built to support the broad mix of message specifications and hardware platforms that our customers actually run.
Paragon offers a broad portfolio of payment and ATM testing solutions. These applications range from enterprise platforms capable of supporting the largest and most sophisticated financial institutions, retailers and payment processors, as well as PC-based tools for focused, single-user work.
Enterprise solutions
Desktop simulators
Any organization that sends, receives, routes or authorizes card transactions, or keeps a fleet of ATMs running, needs to know its changes will work before they reach customers. That's where Paragon Application Systems comes in. Our customers include:
The results speak for themselves. One top-five international card network cut member certification timeframes from several months to just a few days days. One large North American financial institution runs thousands of automated ATM transactions every night.
Many companies sell testing tools as an add-on to their main business. Paragon Application Systems, Inc. has spent more than 30 years focused on one thing: helping organizations prove their payment and ATM systems work before they go live. A few things set us apart:
Demos, licensing, deployment, implementation, and support.
Paragon works with a wide range of organizations involved in payments and self-service banking, including financial institutions, payment processors, card networks, ATM deployers, fintechs, retailers, and technology providers. Our solutions are used by organizations of varying sizes, from regional institutions and service providers to large enterprises managing complex payment and ATM environments. The common requirement is the need to test, validate, certify, and deploy mission critical payment systems with confidence.
Organizations choose Paragon because of our combination of industry experience, independent perspective, and specialized focus on payment and ATM testing. Because our solutions are not tied to a specific network, processor, or ATM manufacturer, customers can test across the environments and specifications they actually use.
Organizations also value Paragon's expertise in certification, automation, payment testing, and ATM testing, along with our long-term commitment to supporting the evolving needs of the industry.
The best way to evaluate a Paragon solution is through a conversation with our team. We begin by understanding your objectives, testing requirements, and existing environment before demonstrating the capabilities most relevant to your organization.
Depending on your specific requirements, we may also discuss deployment options, implementation approaches, migration considerations, and expected outcomes so you can determine whether the solution is a good fit for your needs.
Implementation timeframes vary depending on project scope, integration requirements, and available resources. As a general guide, Web FASTest implementations typically range from one to three months, while VirtualATM implementations range from two to six months.
Standard implemetation projects include environment preparation, software installation and configuration support, training, and solution validation.
During the planning process, Paragon will work with your team to establish a realistic implementation schedule based on your specific requirements.
Yes. Many organizations adopt Paragon solutions while replacing legacy testing tools, in-house systems, or older testing processes.
Our Professional Services team can evaluate migration requirements, identify reusable assets where appropriate, and develop an implementation strategy designed to minimize disruption while accelerating adoption of the new environment.
Yes. In addition to software products, Paragon offers a range of professional services to support implementation, migration, training, testing initiatives, certification projects, and ATM virtualization efforts. Services can be tailored to supplement your team's expertise or provide additional resources during critical projects.
Not necessarily. Professional Services are available to assist with planning, implementation, migration, training, and testing activities, but many organizations choose to manage portions of these activities themselves. The level of assistance required depends on the complexity of the project, available internal resources, and the organization's preferred approach to deployment and ongoing operations.
We customer support through technical and product specialists who understand payment and ATM testing environments. As a part of our standard licensing agreement Paragon provides regular software updates, including card scheme updates and mandates.
Customers receive access to Paragon's 24x7 support portal where they can open support cases, access software updates, and request additional information.
Our goal is to help clients remain current with evolving industry requirements, specification updates, and technology changes while maximizing the value of their investment in our solutions.
Yes. Product education and training are available to help users, administrators, testers, and project teams become productive more quickly and gain confidence using the solution.
Training can cover solution administration, test creation, automation, reporting, ATM virtualization, and other topics relevant to your deployment. Organizations can choose the specific type and level of training that best meets their operational and long-term support requirements.
The easiest way to get started is to contact our team through the website. A Paragon specialist will discuss your objectives, answer questions about our solutions, and arrange a personalized demonstration focused on your organization's specific testing, certification, or ATM validation requirements.
The core concepts behind testing digital payment processing systems.
Comprehensive payment testing helps reduce a wide range of operational, financial, and customer experience risks. Even a small defect that makes it into production can lead to transaction failures, certification delays, customer complaints, reconciliation issues, or service disruptions.
Extensive testing of payment messages and transactions before deployment, enables organizations to identify and correct defects early, validate system behavior under expected conditions, and verify that no updates or changes have caused unintended side effects.
Effective testing helps reduce the likelihood of production incidents while improving confidence in new releases, system upgrades, and network changes.
Today's payment environments are far broader and more complex than they were a decade ago. Organizations must support multiple payment rails, evolving industry standards, changing regulatory requirements, new customer channels, and increasingly frequent software releases.
At the same time, development teams are using AI to deliver enhancements faster than ever before. This combination of growing technical complexity and accelerated delivery schedules has made traditional, manual testing approaches increasingly difficult to scale. Many organizations are now adopting automation, virtualization, and continuous testing strategies, as well as AI-assisted testing tools to help keep pace with change.
Payment message testing focuses on the individual components of the transactions exchanged between systems such as terminals, switches, payment gateways, issuers, acquirers, processors, and card networks. The goal is to verify that messages are correctly formatted, transmitted, received, interpreted, and processed.
This type of testing is particularly important because payment systems rely heavily on message-based communication standards such as ISO 8583, ISO 20022, and related proprietary formats. Even small message-level errors can result in declined transactions, routing issues, reconciliation problems, or certification failures. Effective message testing helps ensure that disparate systems communicate accurately, consistently, and securely across the payment ecosystem.
End-to-end payment testing validates a transaction throughout its entire lifecycle, from the point where a transaction is initiated through every system, application, network, and processing step involved in completing it.
Rather than testing individual components in isolation (unit testing), end-to-end testing verifies that all participating systems work together correctly. This helps organizations identify integration issues, validate transaction flows, confirm accurate message exchanges, and ensure that the complete payment process performs as expected under real-world conditions.
More on end-to-end testing.Performance testing evaluates how payment systems behave under expected and unexpected transaction volumes. It helps organizations understand whether systems can deliver the speed, responsiveness, stability, and scalability required to support business operations.
This is especially important in the payments industry, where periods of peak demand, seasonal traffic spikes, or rapid business growth can place significant stress on transaction processing environments. Performance testing helps identify bottlenecks, capacity constraints, and reliability concerns before they can impact customers or business operations.
Automation allows organizations to execute more tests, more often, with greater consistency than manual processes alone. Automated testing can speed up testing operations, improve quality, expand test coverage, and help reduce costs.
As payment systems continue to grow in complexity, automation has become an essential component of modern testing strategies. By automating repetitive and repeatable testing activities, organizations can improve productivity, support more frequent software releases, and focus skilled resources on higher-value testing and analysis activities.
Modern payment systems are among the most complex transaction-processing environments in the world. They must support multiple networks, message specifications, settlement processes, and certification requirements, as well as a diverse set of application environments, technology stacks, and integration points - often with strict requirements for security, availability, and performance.
Specialized payment testing tools, like those developed by Paragon, are specifically designed to support payment messaging requirements, generate realistic transaction traffic, simulate payment host responses, fight fraud, and support certification efforts. These capabilities help payment industry participants test more efficiently, achieve broader coverage, and maintain deployment confidence as the overall payment system evolves.
There is no single answer that applies to every organization. The appropriate level of testing depends on factors such as transaction volume, system complexity, regulatory requirements, certification obligations, release frequency, and organizational risk tolerance.
Most payment organizations strive to balance testing effort against business risk. The goal is not simply to execute more tests, but to ensure that the right transactions, scenarios, integrations, and edge cases are validated before changes reach production. Automation and continuous testing approaches can help organizations increase speed, coverage, and productivity.
What automation can and can't do for a payment testing operation.
Payment testing automation uses software to execute, validate, and document payment test cases with minimal manual effort. Instead of performing the same tests repeatedly by hand, organizations can automate transaction generation, response validation, regression testing, certification scenarios, and reporting. Automation helps teams test more frequently, improve consistency, reduce errors, and accelerate software releases while maintaining confidence in transaction quality.
No. Automation complements and enhances manual testing efforts, but does not replace them. Testing automation is ideal for deaing with repetitive, repeatable, and regression-oriented tasks, while manual testing remains valuable for exploratory testing, exception handling, user experience validation, and investigating unexpected results.
The most effective testing programs combine automation and human expertise to increase operational efficiency while maintaining flexibility and oversight.
A wide range of payment testing activities can be automated, including transaction validation, regression testing, host simulation, network certification, message format verification, exception testing, performance testing, and end-to-end workflow validation. The exact scope depends on the systems, processes, and objectives involved, but most organizations find significant opportunities to automate repetitive testing tasks.
Automation allows tests to be created once and then executed repeatedly without requiring someone to manually perform each step. Test plans that might take days or weeks to complete manually can often be executed in hours or even minutes.
Automated testing can significantly reduce the time spent preparing test cases, documenting results, and re-running previously completed scenarios, helping organizations move through development, certification, and release cycles much faster.
Yes. Automated testing performs the same steps consistently and accurately every time they run, reducing the risk of human error and improving test quality.
Because automation makes it practical to execute more tests more frequently, defects can often be identified earlier in the development lifecycle. This improves confidence in system behavior and helps organizations deliver higher-quality software and services.
Absolutely. Because automated testing requires less manual effort, organizations can expand test coverage beyond the limited set of scenarios typically validated during manual testing. Teams can execute larger regression suites, explore more transaction variations, test additional exception conditions, and validate more combinations of devices, hosts, and message formats. Expanded test coverage helps further reduce the risk of production issues.
Because automation enables existing staff to run more tests in less time with fewer defects, they can cover more ground and devote recaptured time to higher-value activities.
Rather than spending hours running the same basic test scripts or regression plans, teams can dedicate more time to analysis, troubleshooting, innovation, and project delivery.
This helps organizations scale testing activities without needing proportional increases in manpower.
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Yes. Automation can help reduce the effort required to prepare, execute, document, and repeat certification and release testing activities.
By streamlining repetitive tasks and "pre-certifying" to reduce the number of defects discovered late in the certification or regression process, organizations can often shorten project timelines, improve resource utilization, and lower the overall cost of testing initiatives.
Automation encourages more frequent and consistent testing throughout the software development lifecycle. Defects can be identified earlier, before they make their way into production environments.
Automated regression testing is particularly effective at detecting unintended changes introduced during software updates, helping organizations reduce operational risk and maintain service quality.
Yes. Automated testing provides repeatable evidence that critical functions have been validated prior to deployment.
By executing the same test suites against every release, organizations gain greater visibility into what has changed and what continues to perform as expected.
This helps teams make deployment decisions with greater confidence and reduces uncertainty during software rollouts.
Organizations using automation can run more tests in less time and validate code changes more quickly than those relying entirely on manual testing.
Comprehensive test suites can be executed whenever new code is introduced, helping teams identify issues earlier and accelerate feedback cycles. This allows development and testing teams to support more frequent releases without sacrificing quality.
Agile development and DevOps methodologies emphasize frequent change, rapid feedback, and continuous improvement.
Automated testing fits naturally into these practices by providing fast, repeatable validation whenever software changes are introduced. This allows teams to identify issues earlier, reduce rework, and maintain quality while supporting a faster pace of development.
Yes, Paragon provides published APIs to help organizations intergrate our automated testing solutions with other enterprise applications and systems.
As part of their DevOps implementations many organizations integrate tools like ours into their CI/CD workflows to support modern software development practices.
Automated payment and ATM tests can be triggered as part of the build, validation, or deployment process, helping teams identify issues earlier and maintain a consistent level of quality throughout the development lifecycle.
Yes. Automated tests can be scheduled or triggered to run any time without requiring constant user involvement. This allows organizations to execute regression suites, certification scripts, and validation routines automatically, freeing personnel to focus on reviewing results and resolving issues rather than manually conducting each test.
Many companies schedule automated regression, certification, and validation tests during evenings, weekends, or other off-hours. This maximizes utilization of testing environments, shortens project timelines, and ensures teams arrive each day with completed test results ready for review and analysis.
All organizations that process payments are dealing with growing transaction volumes, increasing system complexity, evolving regulations, and rising customer expectations.
Automation helps address these challenges by improving testing efficiency, expanding test coverage, reducing operational risk, and accelerating change initiatives. As payment ecosystems continue to evolve, automation has become an important strategy for maintaining both quality and agility.
The return on investment from test automation typically comes from reduced manual effort (recovered hours), faster testing cycles, broader test coverage, fewer production defects, and improved resource utilization.
While results vary by organization, many teams find that automation enables them to complete more testing, support more projects, and improve quality without proportionally increasing staffing levels.
A good starting point is to automate the spoecific set of tests that are executed most frequently and consume the greatest amount of manual effort.
Regression testing, certification scripts, release validation, and repetitive transaction testing often deliver the fastest return on investment.
Once those areas are automated, organizations can gradually expand automation into additional testing workflows.
How virtualization changes the dynamics and the economics of an ATM test lab.
ATM testing is the process of verifying that an ATM's software, screen flows, hardware devices and host communications all operate correctly before any updates or changes are deployed into production machines.
Effective ATM testing should cover the transaction flow a customer sees, the messages exchanged with the authorization host, the behavior of devices such as card readers and dispensers, and how the machine handles faults.
ATM testing is distinct in that it specifically exercises the ATM application itself, not only the transaction messages.
Traditionally, banks test ATM software in a physical test lab containing non-production ATMs connected to a test host. Testers stand in front of an ATM and work through transaction flows on the machines by hand, using test cards and physical media - a legacy approach that is limited by the number of machines available, by physical access to the lab, and by the cost of the hardware itself.
Increasingly, organizations are supplementing their physical labs with virtualized ATMs - digital twins the lab ATMs that can be duplicated, shared remotely 24x7, and automated. Paragon's VirtualATM is built for this more modern approach to testing.
Yes. Virtualization technology enables the creation digital "twin" copies real ATMs, including its application stack, configuration, along with simulated CEN/XFS devices, that runs in a physical or virtual server environment (as well as in the cloud) and connects to your test host just as a physical machine would.
Because the virtualized ATM uses the same configuration as the physical ATM, the screens and transaction flows match what customers see on the real machine.
Accessed via a standard web browser, virtual ATMs can be used 24x7x365 by testers working from any location. Additional testing capacity can be increased by simply creating additional virtial copies rather than buying more expensive ATM hardware.
ATM virtualization is the practice of capturing an ATM's software stack and device configuration as a virtual image that can be run, copied and tested separately from the actual physical machine.
Because it is a digital twin of a physical machine, the virtual ATM behaves just like the original: same application software, same screens, same device responses, same host connection.
The practical effect is that ATM test capacity stops being limited by access to physical hardware. Virtual ATM images can be cloned for each tester, versioned, archived and restored, and run in parallel.
Many institutions run a mix of ATM hardware and software to spread supplier risk and keep their purchasing options open. The trade-off is often a separate test toolset, process and skill set for each vendor, and that fragmentation gets expensive to maintain.
VirtualATM can support any CEN/XFS-compliant ATM application, so a single solution can test ATMs from different vendors. Paragon has direct experience with ATM applications from Diebold Nixdorf, NCR, Hyosung, KAL, etc. From the same interface, testers can move between virtual ATMs running different vendor applications.
For a multi-vendor ATM estate, that means:
The result is consistent, comparable testing across your whole ATM estate, without the cost of maintaining a different approach for each manufacturer.
Yes. VirtualATM can generate a wide variety of hardware faults, jams and error conditions, so negative testing does not involve deliberately misusing expensive hardware.
Faults can be selected from a fault list and injected to occur at a specific point in any given transaction or even staged so that several faults occur during a single transaction. This matters because fault handling is exactly the behavior that is hardest to test on real machines and most visible to customers when it goes wrong.
The simple answer is by virtualizing the ATM images that your testers use most, and automating the tests that run most often.
Virtualized ATMs remove the requirement for testers to be physically present in the lab, working with physical machines and allows test capacity to be easily and quickly scaled by copying images rather than buying more ATM hardware. (Some physical hardware is retained for final testing and certification purposes.)
Automation then removes the requirement for a person to be present at all for routine work: recorded or scripted tests can be scheduled to run overnight, and a RESTful API allows virtual ATMs to be driven programmatically from other systems.
What certification involves, and how self-service platforms change the timeline.
Payment certification helps ensure that systems can successfully exchange transactions with payment networks, processors, hosts, and other connected systems. Before new applications, updates, devices, or services can enter production, they must demonstrate that transactions are processed accurately, securely, and according to established requirements.
Certification is important because even small differences in transaction handling can lead to declined payments, settlement issues, customer impact, or network compliance problems. A successful certification provides confidence that all parties can communicate and operate as expected before live transactions begin flowing.
Most certification projects involve multiple organizations, multiple teams, and dozens (or hundreds) of different transaction scenarios. Testing schedules must be coordinated, environments must be prepared, defects must be investigated and corrected, and results must frequently be reviewed by external parties.
Even a single issue can create a cycle of troubleshooting, remediation, and retesting that affects project timelines. As payment ecosystems become more complex and software changes become more frequent, the effort required to complete certification projects can increase significantly without proper preparation and automation.
Network certification typically requires an organization to demonstrate compliance directly to a payment network, processor, host provider, or other external entity. Test results are reviewed and approved by that organization before certification is granted.
Self-certification allows organizations to execute approved test plans independently and attest that required testing has been completed successfully. While both approaches seek to verify compatibility and compliance, self-certification can often provide greater scheduling flexibility and reduce dependency on external testing resources.
The most effective way to reduce certification delays is to identify issues before formal certification begins. Organizations that invest in pre-certification testing, automation, environment preparation, and comprehensive validation are often able to enter certification with greater confidence.
Establishing repeatable testing processes, maintaining current test environments, and validating transaction scenarios throughout the development lifecycle can significantly reduce the number of problems discovered during formal certification activities. The fewer surprises encountered during certification, the more predictable the project timeline becomes.
Yes. Many certification scenarios involve repeatable transaction flows that can be automated and executed consistently. Automation allows organizations to validate changes earlier, execute tests more frequently, and quickly rerun certification scenarios when software or configuration updates occur.
Automated certification testing can help improve accuracy, reduce manual effort, expand test coverage, and shorten regression cycles. By identifying issues before formal certification begins, organizations often enter the certification process better prepared and with greater confidence.
Successful certification projects typically begin long before the first formal test case is executed. Organizations should ensure that test environments are available, transaction scenarios are understood, required specifications have been reviewed, and internal testing has been completed before engaging certification partners.
Many companies use tools like Web FASTest and VirtualATM to conduct detailed pre-certification testing to validate transaction flows, identify and correct defects, and confirm certification readiness. Investing time in preparation often helps reduce project risk, improve schedule predictability, and minimize costly rework during certification.
A failed certification does not necessarily mean a project must start over. In most cases, issues are identified, analyzed, corrected, and retested until the required certification criteria are met.
The impact depends on the nature of the issue and when it is discovered. Problems found late in the process can create schedule delays and additional testing cycles. This is one reason organizations increasingly focus on automation, continuous testing, and pre-certification validation to identify defects as early as possible.
The answer depends on the payment network, processor, application, and type of change being introduced. Certifications may be required for new product launches, software upgrades, network mandates, specification updates, infrastructure changes, or the introduction of new services.
Because payment ecosystems continue to evolve, certification is often an ongoing operational activity rather than a one-time project. Many organizations are now using tolls liek tWeb FASTest and VirtualATM to establish repeatable testing and certification processes to help manage future changes more efficiently.
Certification testing demands accuracy, repeatability, and the ability to validate large numbers of transaction scenarios across complex environments. Specialized certification testing tools like Web FASTest help organizations automate test execution, simulate transaction flows, validate message content, and document results more efficiently than manual methods alone.
These capabilities can help teams reduce preparation effort, improve test coverage, identify issues earlier, and manage ongoing certification requirements more effectively. As payment ecosystems become increasingly complex, specialized tools help organizations maintain confidence while keeping projects on schedule.
What each product does, and how to tell which one you need.
The right solution depends on a number of factors, including your current operational environment, the types of testing challenges you need to address, etc.
Organizations focused on retail payment message and transaction testing, validation, automation, and certification will want to look at Web FASTest.
Organizations who manage ATM fleets and want to streamline their testing operations, increase testing throughput, automate their ATM testing processes, and reduce dependence on physical devices should focus on VirtualATM.
Teams responsible for ATM software configuration and management will want to check out ConfigBuilder 5.
If you are uncertain which solution best fits your requirements, Paragon can help evaluate your objectives and recommend the most appropriate approach.
Web FASTest is Paragon's platform for payment testing, certification testing, transaction validation, automation, host simulation, and performance testing.
Web FASTest supports issuer and acquirer workflows for a wide variety of ISO 8583 message specifications, as well as many other types of retail payment messages, including ATM formats like NDC+ and D912, and helps organizations create, execute, automate, and manage payment transaction tests throughout the software development lifecycle.
Many financial institutions, processors, networks, and fintechs use Web FASTest to automate repetitive testing activities, accelerate certifications, improve test coverage, and support increasingly complex payment environments.
VirtualATM is designed for organizations that develop, maintain, test, or support ATM applications and self-service banking environments. By leveraging virtualization technologies, VirtualATM enables teams to validate ATM software, workflows, and device interactions 24x7 without requiring continuous access to physical ATMs.
ATM fleet owners and operators use VirtualATM to improve accessibility, accelerate testing activities, support distributed teams, and reduce reliance on traditional ATM test labs.
ConfigBuilder 5 helps organizations create, manage, maintain, and validate ATM configurations more efficiently. It provides a centralized environment for working with ATM software configurations and supports ATM deployment, maintenance, upgrade, and migration activities.
Organizations use ConfigBuilder 5 to simplify configuration management, improve consistency across ATM estates, reduce manual effort, and support ongoing ATM lifecycle management activities.
Web FASTest and VirtualATM address different testing challenges.
Web FASTest focuses primarily on payment message validation, transaction testing, certification, automation, host simulation, and performance testing across payment ecosystems.
VirtualATM focuses on ATM application testing, ATM device virtualization, ATM workflow validation, and reducing dependence on physical ATM hardware and lab environments.
Many organizations use both solutions because ATM software testing and payment transaction testing often represent complementary parts of the same delivery process.
Yes. Many organizations use multiple Paragon solutions to support different stages of testing, validation, and deployment in order to faciltate end-to-end testing across their payment processing environment.
For example, an organization may use Web FASTest to validate transaction processing while using VirtualATM to test ATM applications and ConfigBuilder 5 to manage ATM configurations.
Together, these solutions can help organizations create a more comprehensive and efficient testing environment while supporting both payment and ATM-related initiatives.
Absolutely. Many organizations begin by addressing a specific testing challenge and then expand their capabilities over time as requirements evolve.
For example, a financial institution might initially implement Web FASTest to support ISO network testing and later add VirtualATM to modernize ATM testing workflows and facilitate end-to-end testing across these two envionments.
Others may begin with ATM virtualization and later introduce automation, certification support, or configuration management capabilities. This approach allows organizations to prioritize immediate needs while preserving future growth options.
ATMulator Plus, FASTest, and FASTress are PC-based tools for smaller teams that need focused testing without enterprise capabilities. They cover issuer and acquirer message simulation, load and throughput testing, and ATM simulation. are established Paragon solutions that continue to support a variety of testing and validation requirements.
FASTest provides payment transaction simulation and testing capabilities.
FASTress focuses on high-volume performance and stress testing.
ATMulator Plus supports ATM-related testing activities.
While many organizations are now evaluating newer platforms such as Web FASTest, VirtualATM, and ConfigBuilder 5 these proven solutions remain part of the broader Paragon portfolio and continue to provide value in many customer environments.
Which specifications, networks and ATM platforms Paragon's tools work with.
Web FASTest supports issuer and acquirer message processing for dozens of regional, national and global payment specifications, plus common ATM and POS device formats.
However, simply selling a specification once isn't good enough. Networks and processors update their specifications regularly, often through mandates with fixed compliance dates. Paragon tracks those changes and updates the field definitions, valid values and test data in each supported format.
Updates are delivered through regular Web FASTest releases. Each release comes with notes that list the specific changes, so your team knows what changed and can start testing new mandate requirements right away.
For licensed specifications, these updates are part of your annual maintenance and support fees. And because Web FASTest is browser-based, there is no local software to update, so every user works with the same current version.
If you need a format that isn't on the list, or have questions about a specific network or processor, please contact our team.
ISO 8583 is the international standard for the financial transaction messages exchanged between cards, terminals, acquirers, networks and issuers. Almost all retail card transactions are based on it.
The complication is that the standard permits interpretation. Each network has its own variant, its own field usage and its own certification requirements, so implementing "ISO 8583" once does not mean an organization can connect to every network.
This is why testing and certifying against each network's unique specification is so important.
ISO 20022 is newer global standard for financial messaging. It was developed to fix the main limitation of older formats like ISO 8583, that were originally designed and deployed decades ago with the sole purpose of moving money.
Specifications like ISO 8583 were developed at a time when computing power was weak and network bandwidth was scarce. Their messages are compact and fast, but they use a fixed set of numbered fields with little room for adding additional details or data. When networks needed to send more information, they usually added their own extensions (bitmaps), which is why the payments industry ended up with so many proprietary variations of the standard.
ISO 20022 takes a different approach:
ISO 20022 is now the standard for cross-border payments on the Swift network and for many high-value and real-time payment systems. Card and ATM processing still runs mostly on ISO 8583, so most organizations will be running both standards for years. During that time, testing has to cover both formats and how messages are translated between them.
Paragon supports ISO 8583-based testing today and is actively developing ISO 20022 capabilities. Contact us to discuss your requirements.
CEN/XFS (Extensions for Financial Services from CEN, the European Committee for Standardization), often just called XFS, is the widely adopted standard that defines a common software interface for self-service hardware such as card readers, PIN pads, cash dispensers, depositors, recyclers and printers.
XFS lets ATM applications work with devices from different manufacturers through a common interface. That matters for testing: since an XFS-compliant ATM application talks to its devices through this standardized interface, the application can be virtualized and its devices simulated. That's what makes vendor-independent ATM testing possible.
Paragon VirtualATM is built around the XFS standard. It supports XFS-compliant ATM applications from leading ATM hardware vendors, as well as Windows-based XFS-compliant kiosks and interactive teller machines (ITMs). Organizations can test across their self-service estate with a single solution instead of a separate tool for each manufacturer.
VirtualATM supports CEN/XFS-compliant ATM applications from vendors like Diebold Nixdorf, NCR, Hyosung, KAL and others.
Any device that uses the XFS standard can be supported, including card readers, PIN pads, depositors, and cash and coin recyclers. Windows-based XFS-compliant kiosks and ITMs can also supported.
ConfigBuilder 5 supports Windows-based ATMs from NCR and Diebold Nixdorf, including legacy Wincor emulation environments.
Every payment and ATM testing operation is different. A Paragon product consultant will ask about your environment, your current testing challenges, your requirements, and priorities, then tell you plainly whether we can help.
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