Online banking, also known as internet banking, it is an electronic payment system that enables customers of a bank or other financial institution to conduct a range of financial transactions through the financial institution's website. The online banking system will typically connect to or be part of the core banking system operated by a bank and is in contrast to branch banking which was the traditional way customers accessed banking services.

To access a financial institution's online banking facility, a customer with internet access will need to register with the institution for the service, and set up a password and other credentials for customer verification. The credentials for online banking is normally not the same as for telephone or mobile banking. Financial institutions now routinely allocate customers numbers, whether or not customers have indicated an intention to access their online banking facility. Customer numbers are normally not the same as account numbers, because a number of customer accounts can be linked to the one customer number. Technically, the customer number can be linked to any account with the financial institution that the customer controls, though the financial institution may limit the range of accounts that may be accessed to, say, cheque, savings, loan, credit card and similar accounts.

Different phases involved in developing Internet Banking in your Bank are -

1) Requirement Gathering:

Requirement gathering phase involves documentation of requirements either as Functional Specifications or as Use Cases. Requirements are gathered as per customer needs and documented by Banking Experts or Business Analyst.

Experts are involved in writing requirements on more than one subject as banking itself has multiple subdomains and one full fledge banking application will be the integration of all these domains.

For Example, A banking application may have separate modules for Transfers, Credit Cards, Reports, Loan Accounts, Bill Payments, Trading Etc.

2) Requirement Review:

The deliverable of Requirement Gathering is reviewed by all the stakeholders such as QA Engineers, Development leads and Peer Business Analysts.

They cross-check that neither existing business workflows nor new workflows are violated. All the requirements are verified and validated. Follow up actions and requirement document revisions are done based on the same.

3) Business Scenario Preparations:

In this stage, QA Engineers derive Business Scenarios from the requirement documents (Functions Specs or Use Cases); Business Scenarios are derived in such a way that all Business Requirements are covered. Business Scenarios are high-level scenarios without any detailed steps. Further, these Business Scenarios are reviewed by Business Analysts to ensure all of the Business Requirements are met. It is easier for BAs to review high-level scenarios rather than reviewing low-level detailed Test Cases.

For example, a customer opening a Fixed deposit on the digital banking interface can be a business scenario. Similarly, we can have different business scenarios related to net banking account creation, online deposits, online transfers, etc.

4) Functional Testing:

In this stage, functional testing is performed and the usual software testing activities are performed such as:

Test Case Preparation:

In this stage Test Cases are derived from Business Scenarios, one Business Scenario leads to several positive test cases and negative test cases. Generally, tools used during this stage are Microsoft Excel, Test Director or Quality Center.

Test Case Review:

Reviews by peer QA Engineers

Test Case Execution:

Test Case Execution could be either manual or automatic involving tools like QC, QTP or any other.

The functional testing of a banking application is quite different from the ordinary software testing. Since these applications operate with customer’s money and sensitive financial data, they are required to be tested thoroughly. No important business scenario should be left to be covered. Also, the QA resource who is testing the application should have the basic knowledge of banking domain.

5) Database Testing:

Banking Application involves complex transaction which is performed both at UI level and Database level, Therefore, Database testing is as important as functional testing. The database is complicated & an entirely separate layer in the application and thus its testing is carried out by database specialists. It uses techniques like:

• Data loading
• Database Migration
• Testing DB Schema and Data types
• Rules Testing