Transformed Payment Quality & Uptime For A Leading Bank

Testhouse was approached to address significant payment system issues faced by our client, a major Middle Eastern bank. The bank was struggling with an inefficient and insecure payment mechanism, affecting customer satisfaction and revenue. They aimed to introduce a reliable direct debit system for recurring payments and a secure, fast system for high-value transactions. Our approach involved extensive functional and interoperability testing, performance analysis and a bespoke real-time dashboard for progress monitoring, leading to a notable reduction in customer complaints and transaction errors.

• The bank faced challenges in customer satisfaction and revenue due to an inefficient and insecure payment mechanism.
• It urgently needed to implement a direct debit system for recurring payments and a secure, fast payment system for high-value transactions.
• The bank’s goal was to establish a centralized payment transaction platform, reduce reliance on correspondent banking, and improve efficiency.
• The bank lacked the in-house expertise to validate payment applications and ensure the quality and reliability of the Emirates clearing house system.
• The bank expected high system availability with Five 9’s (99.999% uptime) and relied on the testing vendor to help reduce the cost of quality.

Testhouse carried out extensive testing to address these challenges:

• Direct Debit System Testing: Conducted functional testing on the Direct Debit System to ensure it could handle automated mandates, manage returns, and accurately process recurring payments.
• United Arab Emirates Funds Transfer System Testing: Performed functional testing on the United Arab Emirates Funds Transfer System, ensuring it could process high-value interbank transactions accurately, including reconciliation of accounts and exception management.
• Emirates Clearing House Systems Interoperability Testing: Conducted interoperability testing on the Emirates Clearing House systems to confirm their ability to integrate with other payment systems and platforms, including cross-border transactions and connectivity with other banks and financial institutions.
• Performance Testing: Deployed a JMeter-based performance framework to provide real-time dashboards and detailed analytics for identifying performance-related bottlenecks within the payment system.
• Shift-Left Methodology: Employed the “Shift-left” method of performance testing to identify design and architectural faults early in the development process, ultimately reducing the total cost of quality.
• SME-QE Methodology: Introduced the SME-QE (Subject Matter Expert Quality Engineering) methodology and deployed an 8-member team comprising payment domain and testing experts. Conducted discovery workshops with the business and IT teams to identify the scope and define an end-to-end testing strategy for the program.
• Static Testing Framework: Implemented the Testhouse Static Testing framework to improve the atomicity, completeness, and testability of requirements, reducing rework effort and the cost of quality by identifying requirement issues upfront.
• Real-Time Dashboard: Developed a real-time bespoke dashboard to provide regular updates on the program’s progress and metrics, linked with the Test Management tool for accessibility to status data.

The efforts resulted in significant improvements:

• 5% reduction in customer complaints.
• 20% reduction in transaction error rates.
• Achieved 100% test execution coverage, ensuring comprehensive testing of the systems.