Banks and building societies have come increasingly media savvy over recent years having bolstered their in-house communications teams and use of PR agencies to create the best possible image.

It’s become a slick operation with much achieved. New products and services are effectively brought into the spotlight; successes are celebrated and a commitment to communities is heralded.

Financial institutions are on a constant look out to promote the good and to prevent negative publicity – but is there a PR disaster, not obvious to some, just waiting to happen? The answer is most definitely ‘yes’!

Payments testing – helping to prevent systems failure

However positive the bank or building societies image, a systems failure preventing customers access to their funds will destroy a standing which may have taken decades to build. The ability to carry out safe and secure payments is one basic necessity and absolutely vital in maintaining customer trust and corporate reputation. A payments systems failure, when it occurs, quickly becomes a management team’s worst nightmare and is more common than you might think – any internet search will provide you with recent examples involving high profile brands.

At the same time as some institutions are experiencing such high profile failures, the payments businesses of all banks and building societies have been affected by unprecedented levels of change. While institutions are busy developing the latest technology and working with new suppliers, their testing capability is largely lagging behind and this is when problems begin.

Adopting the ‘right’ payments testing will help avoid a range of damaging situations.

What’s needed?

It is essential that payments testing reflects the real world, end-to-end process in full, with all its supporting interfaces and system foibles.  This may involve testing legacy systems in parallel with new technologies such as Micro-Services.  This is problematic with an array of stand-alone simulators.

Financial institutions firstly need to hold a fundamental review and change their approach to testing ahead of new system launches. This involves simplifying, investing to improve their current practices and then embracing automation with the latest testing tools and techniques. This investment in technology must rationalise, simplify and automate testing, and provide a constantly available and full regression capability.  Covid has also highlighted that this test capability needs to be accessible from anywhere in the world by anyone involved in the design, development, testing and implementation of payment initiatives.

Institutions wanting to succeed need to take their testing beyond automation, as this alone is not the answer to assure the quality of your next software release. Only the proposed ground-up review of a bank or building society’s current approach to testing, coupled with a strategic investment in appropriate technology, will enable a move from the current state of basic payments testing to one of strategic business assurance.

Effective payment testing remains key to the future health of all banks and building societies – partnering with a progressive, specialist provider will provide peace of mind in a rapidly changing, technologically driven, financial services environment.

Anthony Walton is chief executive of Iliad Solutions