How to test ACH transactions in a payment/banking application?

Question

I have to test a web-based payment/banking gateway application that would be used by the clients to transfer funds electronically using ACH and Wire transfer. The applications provides cash-management facilities to users.

What kind of test scenarios should I create and what should be my testing approach in general while doing functional, black box testing of any funds/payment application.

Please provide me some ideas related to payment/banking app testing.

Answer 1

Here are a few techniques I have seen used. ACH is a loose enough standard that an ACH that works for one financial institution will not necessarily work for another. If you have a particular financial institution in mind, they may be able to set up a test account for you. You can use ACH to move fictional amounts in and out of the test account.

Lacking a test account, you may be able to set up a real account. You will have to be very careful to move only very small amounts in and out of the real account. We used this technique, but only as a smoke test, and only under very controlled circumstances.

Finally, if you understand the ACH format well enough, you may be able to write an ACH validator that checks that your ACH is filled in correctly.

Answer 2

What I've done with organizations in the past is to have either test accounts or test environments set up with the banks. Just as user246 said, files that work for one bank may not work at another. I know some of the major banks will provide a test environment that you can submit files to, and they will validate and report on the results. When it came time for full end-to-end testing, we would run a process through with $1 or $0.01, depending on the bank.

There are some key areas to check, and some things I would recommend.

1. Test all file formats you will use with all banks before sending any test files. A validation tool is useful for this step.
2. Set up a test environment that will allow you to exercise the software, and ends by sending a file to either a mocked or virtualized service, or a real test/sandbox endpoint at the necessary bank(s). Verify that the correct file got to the correct place, and the correct information was contained in the file, etc. If you can stand up your own service here, you can run your own validation tools and compare the file you received with the file you sent, etc.
3. Final acceptance testing can be done with a live system and sending the minimum allowed amount for a transfer. Some banks charge fees for transfers, just something to keep in mind when calculating test costs.

Answer 3

In my work with ACH networks I know there was also a time delay in when transactions were sent to ACH and when ACH sent the data back from the other bank. Have you thought about setting up any testing around the end-to-end data transfer and end-of-day processing?