Banking applications generally perform well under normal conditions, given functional testing is thoroughly done; however, they are truly tested during peak usage times. For instance, Chase Bank has faced multiple outages during high-traffic periods like Black Friday, leading to significant customer disruptions. Similarly, the UK’s Co-op Bank has experienced repeated failures on critical payment days, resulting in considerable public backlash and customer defections, widely discussed on social media.
These incidents highlight that any inconvenience with your banking apps can have a direct toll on your bank’s reputation and customer loyalty.
To prevent such failures and ensure your app can withstand any situation, it’s essential to understand and implement various performance tests. In fact, this understanding will also help you in the vendor selection process. How? By knowing which vendors excel in these critical testing areas, you can significantly ease the selection burden.
So without further ado let’s get into the list we’ve compiled for the types of performance tests for banks that should not be overlooked.
10 Types of Performance Testing for Banking Apps
Mastering performance testing is essential—it’s the key to ensuring your banking app performs reliably, especially during critical times.
Below are the 10 must-have tests every bank should include in their app’s testing process:
- Load Testing
- Stress Testing
- Scalability Testing
- Endurance Testing (Soak Testing)
- Latency Testing
- Spike Testing
- Volume Testing
- Configuration Testing
- Recovery Testing
- Capacity Testing
#1. Load Testing
Load testing assesses an app’s ability to handle high-traffic scenarios effectively. By creating virtual users and scripts that replicate typical user activities, this testing identifies the maximum operating capacity of the app and the points at which load its performance begins to deteriorate.
Banking Relevance: Imagine a major retail banking app during peak times like payday or a large promotional event. The system needs to handle thousands of users logging in simultaneously to check balances, transfer money, and pay bills without any performance hitches. Load testing helps ensure that the app can manage these high-traffic volumes smoothly, which is essential for maintaining customer trust and satisfaction.
#2. Stress Testing
Your application should be prepared for whatever comes ahead. And how to do that? Push your application beyond its normal operational limits to see how it handles extreme, unexpected loads. This is stress testing, which is crucial for identifying potential breaking points of the application.
Banking Relevance: Stress testing has become indispensable for banks since the 2008 financial crisis, which was characterized by massive withdrawals due to widespread panic among depositors. Additionally, during the pandemic, banks were thrust into unprecedented financial pressures as they had to quickly adapt to a surge in online transactions, emergency loan applications, and fluctuating market conditions.
By rigorously applying stress tests, banks can better understand how their applications perform while maintaining all stability even during these unexpected, high-stress events.
#3. Scalability Testing
As users’ demands shift, can your app scale up during peak loads and efficiently scale down when traffic decreases? Scalability testing ensures your app adapts to both, maintaining performance under increasing loads while optimizing resources during quieter periods.
Banking Relevance: With banks rapidly expanding their digital services, the capability of their infrastructures to both scale up to meet these demands and scale down when needed is vital. Scalability testing assesses how well these systems respond to increased loads—measuring the capacity for handling new users and transactions within a given timeframe—and ensures they can also reduce resource use effectively when demand wanes. Along with that, this testing focuses on critical metrics such as CPU usage, memory, disk I/O, and network bandwidth. Properly managing these resources is essential; excessive use can lead to slowdowns, instability, or system outages, seriously affecting user trust and service reliability.
#4. Endurance Testing (Soak Testing)
If you want to ensure that your applications can handle continuous activity over long periods without any issues, you need to run it under endurance testing. This testing simulates long-term usage to ensure that the application can sustain normal functions under prolonged stress.
Banking Relevance: Some banking applications handle continuous transactions over extended periods, such as during a high-volume trading day or around tax submission deadlines. Endurance testing simulates these extended periods to observe how the application behaves under continuous load.
Much like load testing, this test involves applying a typical user load but for an extended period to identify potential slowdowns or failures that might occur due to sustained use.
#5. Latency Testing
To measure the time delay (or latency) in processing requests and delivering responses across various network conditions is done through latency testing. It is critical for applications where real-time responsiveness is essential, such as in banking transactions, stock trading, or any time-sensitive financial operations.
Banking Relevance: When customers initiate a rapid stock purchase during a market surge, they expect the transaction to be processed instantaneously, as any delay could affect the execution price and their investment outcome. This expectation holds especially true in global banking, where services are delivered over distributed networks spanning multiple regions.
#6. Spike Testing
To test your application’s response to sudden load surges, use spike testing. It checks how the system handles rapid load fluctuations, ensuring stability and quick recovery during unpredictable traffic changes.
Banking Relevance: In banking, unexpected events like a sudden drop in interest rates or a new financial product announcement can lead to a massive influx of users logging into the app simultaneously to modify accounts or apply for loans. Such a surge can overwhelm an unprepared system, leading to slowdowns, errors, or even crashes. Spike testing simulates these scenarios to ensure the application can handle sudden peaks in traffic efficiently without any disruptions.
#7. Volume Testing
To check how well your application responds to large amounts of data, you need to run it through a volume test. It ensures that as data loads increase, the system continues to respond accurately and perform reliably without losing or corrupting data.
Banking Relevance: In the banking sector, where transactions and customer data interactions are constant and often voluminous, volume testing is essential. It verifies that the application can manage growing data loads while maintaining performance integrity, responsiveness, and reliability.
#8. Configuration Testing
Suppose your application is designed to work on multiple operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and mobile platforms (like iOS, Android, etc.). In that case, configuration testing checks the app’s performance on these systems to ensure that it operates consistently and reliably, regardless of the user’s device.
Banking Relevance: As banking becomes more digital, customers access services via multiple platforms—mobile web, iOS, Android apps, and desktop browsers. Configuration testing is essential to ensure a seamless experience across these environments. It prevents compatibility issues, like bugs or performance lags, that can arise when switching platforms. This testing is crucial for maintaining a consistent user experience, reducing customer dissatisfaction, and protecting the bank’s reputation in a digital-first world.
#9. Recovery Testing
To check how fast your application is ready for a comeback after a breakdown that ensures the recovery test. This process ensures a banking application can bounce back from a crash or failure like a resilient boxer getting up after a knockdown.
Banking Relevance: Banks need their applications to be virtually indestructible. Recovery testing simulates scenarios like power failures, network disruptions, or hardware malfunctions to ensure the bank’s systems can recover quickly and effectively. This is crucial not only for maintaining customer trust but also for complying with financial regulations that demand robust disaster recovery procedures.
#10. Capacity Testing
How many users can your app handle? This question is at the core of capacity testing, where the user limit of applications is identified to ensure how many users they can support gracefully.
Banking Relevance: As banks scale their operations, they need to know the maximum number of users or transactions their systems can handle before performance starts to degrade. Capacity testing helps banks plan for growth and peak load times (like during Black Fridays or tax season), ensuring they continue to deliver smooth and uninterrupted service to their customers, regardless of the load.
As we wrap up our review of key performance testing types for banking apps, it’s clear that thorough testing is non-negotiable. Missing any test can expose applications to serious performance risks. This highlights the importance of a skilled testing partner. With Avekshaa’s focused approach to performance optimization with their Centre of Excellence (CoE), you’re in good hands to cover all necessary tests comprehensively. Let’s explore Avekshaa’s capabilities in more detail in the next section.
Avekshaa’s Advanced Performance Testing Solution for Global Banking Applications
With over a decade of expertise, Avekshaa Technologies excels in turning performance challenges into significant successes for the banking industry.
For example, when a leading bank faced the challenge of a fivefold increase in transactions through Asia’s largest payment gateway, Avekshaa not only resolved the issues but also dramatically improved transaction speeds and customer satisfaction.
Here is why you choose Avekshaa for banking performance testing:
- Advanced P-A-S-S™ Platform: Our proprietary P-A-S-S™ Assurance Platform offers a robust framework for optimizing application performance, availability, and scalability, ensuring your systems always operate at their best.
- Comprehensive Root Cause Analysis: We address the symptoms and identify and resolve the underlying causes of performance issues, ensuring your applications function smoothly and efficiently.
- Holistic Solutions: We provide end-to-end performance solutions that cover every layer of your banking IT infrastructure, from custom-built systems to commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products, ensuring all components are finely tuned for optimal performance.
- Tailored Testing Strategies: Our team designs specific workload models and testing environments that simulate real-world conditions, from high load to all other possible failover scenarios, ensuring your applications are resilient and reliable.
- Guaranteed Performance Excellence: Through rigorous testing and detailed analysis, we ensure that your banking applications meet the highest standards of performance, availability, and scalability, providing a seamless experience for your customers.
- Unwavering Client Loyalty: With 70% of our business coming from repeat clients, our commitment to delivering excellence and building strong, trusted partnerships is clear.
- Global Recognition: Major banks such as Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, and HSBC trust Avekshaa for their performance testing needs, solidifying our position as a leader in the industry.
Experience the Avekshaa advantage today—start by connecting with our experts to learn more.