A 2023 Consumer Reports survey reveals that 75% of Americans use at least one or more mobile banking apps to manage their finances.
This demand for contactless banking application solutions has increased significantly and will only grow year-over-year.
However, this growing demand brings new challenges—related to the security, functionality, and performance of these applications. For instance, a recent outage at Capital One severely disrupted service, illustrating the repercussions such as customer frustration along with reputational damage and financial losses for prestigious banks.
It’s non-negotiable for banking applications to undergo automation testing, functional testing, performance testing, and many other types of testing to promptly flag discrepancies. But the effectiveness of these testing depends largely on selecting the right vendor.
So here this article will guide you through the top 10 must ask questions from your testing vendor to make the right selection.
How to Hire the Best Banking Applications Testing Vendor – A Questionnaire
Choosing the right vendor for banking application testing goes beyond typical queries like testimonials or tools. It’s about delving deep into their expertise with specific banking scenarios and essential technologies. We’ve developed pointed questions designed to uncover their real capacity in areas where quality, performance, and security are critical.
Below is the refined questionnaire, tailored to help you make an informed decision, ensuring you partner with a vendor that truly understands the complexities of banking applications.
1. Can you share case studies or client references from previous projects?
Purpose: To assess the vendor’s experience and track record in banking application testing services.
Evaluation Criteria: Start by assessing the scope and complexity of their previous work in the banking domain. This involves understanding the breadth of projects they’ve managed, including large systems that support thousands of users, and the complexities involved, such as managing high transaction volumes while adhering to stringent security standards.
To gauge this, request case studies specifically on testing applications within real-time gross settlement systems, payment gateways, CRM systems, and more. Looking into such case studies will help you understand the vendor’s expertise and ability to test effectively within complex environments, ensuring efficiency and compliance with banking regulations.
Additionally, requesting client references to verify their reliability, collaboration and success rate leads to informed selection.
2. How do you ensure compliance with banking regulations and standards in your testing processes?
Purpose: To understand and verify how the vendor ensures compliance with stringent industry regulations—an absolute necessity in banking to safeguard financial data and maintain operational integrity.
Evaluation Criteria: Ask the vendor to describe their approach, how they integrate and adhere to banking-specific regulations, including how they stay updated on changing laws and standards like PCI DSS, GDPR, SOX, and Basel III.
You might also consider inquiring about relevant certifications they hold, such as FSQS, ISTQB, and other regulatory certifications necessary for banking application testing.
Additionally, evaluate their processes to ensure compliance throughout the testing lifecycle, focusing on how they conduct regular audits, the detail about compliance-related documentation they maintain, and the rigor of their validation procedures to ensure all banking regulations are consistently met.
3. What is your approach to security testing in banking applications?
Purpose: To assess if the vendor is capable of meeting the stringent security requirements in banking applications.
Evaluation Criteria: Inquire about the specific security testing methods they employ, including penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, and secure code reviews.
Also, evaluate their knowledge and implementation of multi-factor authentication, encryption standards, and secure data handling practices. To assess this, ask for examples of how they have identified and mitigated security risks in previous banking projects. It is also crucial to understand their approach to continuous monitoring and updating security protocols as threats evolve.
4. How do you conduct performance or load testing for banking applications?
Purpose: To ensure the vendor can test the performance and scalability of your banking app under real-life conditions.
Evaluation Criteria: Ask for details about their performance testing strategies, including the tools and methodologies they use for load testing, stress testing, and scalability testing of banking applications.
Understanding their capacity to simulate high transaction volumes and peak loads is crucial, as this will help you identify how effectively the vendor can address potential bottlenecks.
In fact, ask for a clear explanation of how they measure and report key performance metrics such as response time, throughput, and resource utilization in various real-life scenarios in banks. This insight will boost your confidence in their ability to uphold your banking application’s performance under diverse conditions.
5. Can you explain your disaster recovery and backup testing processes?
Purpose: To verify the vendor’s ability to effectively test and ensure the resilience and recovery of banking applications in the event of system failures.
Evaluation Criteria: Investigate the vendor’s ability to design a disaster recovery plan tailored to the specific needs of banking applications. Then comes asking about how they conduct disaster recovery testing. Specifically, inquire about their methods for conducting full-scale and simulation tests to validate the recovery plan.
It’s important to understand the scenarios they test for, both natural or cyber disasters, and how they measure the effectiveness of the recovery during these tests. Ask for examples of how these tests have successfully identified and mitigated potential issues in real-world scenarios.
To ensure that you’re making the right choice, ask for specific examples of their experience. For example, testing a recovery scenario where the primary data center failed.
6. How do you manage role-based access control testing?
Purpose: To ensure the vendor can effectively test and validate user roles and permissions within the banking application.
Evaluation Criteria: Ask the vendor to explain their approach to Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) testing, including how they verify that users are granted the appropriate level of access based on their roles and that there are no deviations that could lead to unauthorized access.
Inquire about how they simulate various user roles to verify that the correct access privileges are enforced. Also, ask how they test the system’s responsiveness to role changes. How quickly and accurately does the system update to reflect these changes, and what measures are in place to ensure that role updates do not introduce new security risks?
7. Do you have the necessary testing infrastructure to meet the specific needs of banking applications?
Purpose: To ensure the vendor has the specialized tools and frameworks required for banking application testing.
Evaluation Criteria: Request the vendor to provide a detailed overview of their testing infrastructure. A framework-agnostic vendor would have a robust combination of software tools, emulators, operating systems, and backend database systems.
Ensure they have key frameworks essential for testing banking applications, such as Selenium for web automation, JMeter for load testing, Appium for mobile testing, Cucumber for behavior-driven testing, and OWASP ZAP for security assessments.
In addition to the frameworks, verify their ability to replicate your production environment for end-to-end testing and integrate these frameworks into CI/CD pipelines to maintain quality throughout development.
8. How do you handle testing during migration projects?
Purpose: To ensure the vendor can manage the complexities and risks, especially during migrations, upgrades, and platform changes.
Evaluation Criteria: Ask the vendor about their experience with testing during migration, including how they handle data migration, system integration, and platform changes. Evaluate their ability to perform data validation before and after migration to ensure accuracy and integrity.
You should ask how they manage potential downtime, compatibility issues, and performance impacts during migration. Additionally, inquire about their approach to rollback strategies and contingency planning in case of migration failures.
9. Can you explain your post-release testing support services?
Purpose: To ensure the vendor provides ongoing testing support to maintain application stability and performance after release.
Evaluation Criteria: Ask the vendor to detail their post-release testing services, focusing on how they monitor and address issues that may arise after deployment. Ensure the vendor has strategies to test your application’s resilience against factors like background processes, network changes, device variations, and browser differences. You should also evaluate their ability to quickly identify and fix post-release issues to keep your application secure, functional, and user-friendly.
10. Can you detail your pricing model for banking application testing services?
Purpose: To understand the cost structure and ensure it aligns with your budget.
Evaluation Criteria: Ask for a breakdown of costs, including initial setup, ongoing testing, and tool usage. Ensure the vendor provides transparent cost management and discusses any additional expenses upfront.
While the right partner can bring many benefits, selecting the wrong one poses substantial risks, such as reduced software quality and project delays. Recognizing the critical importance of this decision, let’s delve deeper to understand why service providers like Avekshaa Technologies stand out as a strategic choice for your banking application testing needs in the next section.
Why Choose Avekshaa as Your Banking Application Testing Partner?
Before diving into why Avekshaa stands out as a strategic choice, consider reviewing the banking case studies provided here. You’ll see how banks faced pivotal challenges during crucial projects and how Avekshaa stepped in. Our expertise in the BFSI sector, combined with a robust testing framework, expedited the bank’s initiatives, enhancing both operational efficiency and customer experience.
Here’s what sets Avekshaa apart:
- Extensive Experience: With over 3,000+ issues resolved in FinTech and banking, Avekshaa’s vast knowledge base ensures quick and effective solutions.
- High Customer Retention: A 70% repeat business rate reflects their strong commitment to long-term client relationships and consistent service quality.
- Innovative Solutions: The proprietary P-A-S-S Assurance Platform and unique IPs provide advanced testing solutions that are not readily available elsewhere.
- Trusted by Industry Leaders: Top banks, including Axis, ICICI, and HDFC, trust Avekshaa, demonstrating their capability to meet rigorous international standards.
- Tailored Testing Approaches: Avekshaa designs specific testing strategies to meet unique project demands, ensuring thorough preparedness for any scenario.
- Dedicated Team: A low attrition rate ensures a stable, skilled workforce dedicated to maintaining high standards of quality assurance.
Discover how we can elevate your banking application’s performance, functionality, security, and reliability. Connect with our team of experts to explore tailored testing solutions.