Payment systems play a crucial role in modern economic activities, providing a convenient, secure, and reliable means for transactions between merchants and consumers, and driving economic growth and business development. Typically, the core business of a payment system includes inbound transactions (merchant acquiring and customer top-ups), inter-account transactions (customer transfers and merchant payments), and outbound transactions (refunds and merchant settlement withdrawals), among others.

Regardless of the type of business involved, security, stability, and compliance are the foundations. To ensure the robust operation of the system and the legality of user transactions, testing work is of paramount importance. This article will take inbound transactions as an example to detail the process of functional testing and analyze the issues that need attention.

Inbound transactions generally have two pathways: one is customers making payments to merchants, and the other is customers topping up;

First, for customers to make payments or top-ups in the payment system, they need to register and open an account in the system (customers who only make payment transactions do not need to register), which can be completed through the customer portal system within the payment system, allowing individual or corporate customers to register, authenticate, and sign agreements;

Secondly, during the customer transaction process, it is necessary to conduct multi-dimensional checks on the transaction business itself and the status, rules, and configurations of the paying customers and receiving merchants. It is also necessary to implement necessary compliance and regulatory strategies such as risk control, blacklists, anti-fraud, anti-money laundering, and reporting to payment clearing association data;

Finally, after the customer transaction is completed, it is necessary to fully record the transaction, notify downstream business systems of the transaction results, and combine the platform’s account system with clearing and accounting rules to clear and account for the transaction.

To ensure the high quality and availability of the payment system, detailed testing is conducted on all business involved before the release of a payment system.

Based on the simple introduction to the inbound transaction business in the payment system, when conducting functional testing on inbound transactions, the following aspects can generally be considered:

1.Transaction Ordering

1)Payer: Check whether the payer has registered and is real-name verified, whether the customer status and account status are normal, and whether there are any transaction restrictions;

2)Payee: Check whether the payee has registered and is authenticated, whether the merchant status and account status are normal, whether they have enabled acquiring capabilities, whether there is a usable cash register, and whether they have reported to the channel, etc.

2.Transaction Payment

1)Cash Register: Check whether the cash register needed for the transaction can be accessed normally, whether the payment methods are displayed completely, and whether each payment method is available;

2)Rules: Check whether there are corresponding fee rules for the payer, whether there are corresponding acquiring fee rules and settlement rules for the payee, and whether there are corresponding profit-sharing rules in cases involving profit-sharing;

3)Channels: Check whether the necessary information required for a certain payment method of a certain channel (such as the sub-channel number, name, channel product name, merchant name, merchant number, APPID required by the WeChat channel, etc.) has been fully configured, whether the channel rate has been configured, and whether the channel limit has been configured;

4)Risk Control: Check whether the payer is on the blacklist, whether the payment card triggers risk control restrictions, whether the payment channel is limited, whether the payer’s single transaction is limited, and whether the merchant’s single transaction is limited.

3.Transaction Completion

1)Transaction Results: Check whether the channel transaction results are synchronized back, whether asynchronous callbacks can be made, whether transaction results can be queried from the channel, and whether downstream business systems can be notified;

2)Transaction Orders: Check whether the transaction status, payment amount, payment channel, payment method, payment time, fee amount, payer and payee, transaction products, etc., have been fully recorded;

3)Transaction Funds: Check whether the account has been cleared according to the preset clearing and accounting rules, whether accounting details have been inserted, whether the balance updates of the accounts involved are accurate, whether the data to be settled has been recorded, and whether the data to be profit-shared has been recorded.

By deeply understanding the inbound transaction business of the payment system and starting from the perspective of functional testing, we deeply recognize the indispensable role of testing work in ensuring the high-quality operation of the payment system. Only through strict verification and detection can we ensure the legality and compliance of user transactions and ensure the reliability and security of system functions.