Comparison of payments and banking API test tools

PSD2 banking API standards

The 'Berlin Group' is a pan-European payments interoperability standards and harmonisation initiative with the primary
objective of defining open and common scheme- and processor-independent standards in the inter-banking domain
between Creditor Bank (Acquirer) and Debtor Bank (Issuer), complementing the work carried out by e.g. the European
Payments Council. As such, the Berlin Group has been established as a pure technical standardisation body, focusing on
detailed technical and organisational requirements to achieve this primary objective.

This common API standard is called "NextGenPSD2" and was developed to create uniform and interoperable
communications between banks and TPPs

Open Banking UK

The Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) was created by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority to create
software standards and industry guidelines that drive competition and innovation in UK retail banking.

STET

STET is one of the systemically important payment systems in Europe and they have published their version of the APIs.
The APIs are published as formal YAML specifications.

Australia (WSO2 standard) and New Zealand (based on OBIE standard) defined their initiative, similar to the UK. Most of the data-sharing initiative went hand
in hand with data protection, such as GDPR (in EU), Data Protection Bill (UK), Consumer Data Rights (Australia), and Personal Data Protection Bill (India).
PSD2 like API standards in India
Account Aggregator (AA) framework

For payments - UPI

For sharing of financial data – Sahamati

Empanelled certification providers:

• Fime
• Sumasoft (Pune)
• Aujas – Saksham – NSEIT (Parent)

There are 122 entities in the AA ecosystem

Payment API Test Tools in the Market

1. Fime - Trust API+ - Cloud-based API test platform

2. Cigniti - Testing of core banking systems
3. Yethi – Tenjin Automation Platform
4. APImetrics
5. Iliad solutions – T3 platform
6. Ostia solutions - PSD2 Open API Testing
7. TestGrid
8. Apilogic- API testing
9. TestingPays

(Please note: there are no API test tools from ICC solutions, Galitt,
and UL)
1. Fime TrustAPI+ (revenue - $78m, HQ: Paris)
Fime uses Trust API+ in 3 of their testing services they offer:

1. End-to-end API testing services

Focuses on innovative financial services by outsourcing API functional and security testing.

Advantages of this service:

• Open banking API testing services remotely validate PSD2 XS2A (access to account) requirements
• Accelerate your testing and compliance by combining state-of-the-art automated test solutions with
common open API standards
• Reduce the total cost of ownership of API testing programs.
• Achieve the widest test coverage combining static (Static testing is about the prevention of defects) and live
API testing (is about finding and fixing the defects).

2. Sahamati certification services

Open banking testing service

1. TrustAPI+ (continued)
Advantages of this service:

• Sahamati, an industry alliance for the Account Aggregator (AA) ecosystem in India, drives adoption,
innovation and compliance in line with regulatory standards amongst industry participants.
• Successfully self-assess conformance against ReBIT technical specifications.
• Identify, review, and resolve issues efficiently with a designated log view.

3. Ayushman Bharath Digital Mission

To help connect to the ABDM ecosystem. Currently, 867 public and private sector integrators have enrolled
under ABDM Sandbox for integrating and validating their software solutions

Advantages of this service:

• Provides pre-defined test cases and certification scenarios, ensuring quick and reliable compliance with
NRCeS (National Resource Center for Electronic Health Records (EHR) standards) API guidelines.
• Unlimited access to the platform for iterative testing and debugging
• Fully automated API test suites
• Secure information management certified by ISO 27001.
1. TrustAPI+ (continued)
Testfactory 4.0

The new Fime Test Factory 4.0 platform enables payment actors to accelerate the launch of fully tested and certified solutions
without compromising on risk. It allows automation, digitalization and customization of the end-to-end testing process.

Digital payments are evolving fast, driven by rising expectations for more seamless, transparent, and secure user experiences.

The pace of innovation that requires almost weekly solution updates has left the traditional testing and certification
infrastructure behind. This has forced the ecosystem to accept certain risks, rather than slow time to market. There is now a
better way. The Fime Test Factory draws on the fundamentals of automation and intelligent data exchange at the heart of
‘Industry 4.0’. This is revolutionizing the way tests are developed, deployed and consumed

The platform has been designed as a ‘pick & mix’ of five modules connected to automated tools covering in-store, in-app and
online payment solutions testing, all under one simple management layer.
MyTestProcess creates a multi-domain white-label portal to offer digitized test and certification processes.
MyTestStudio enables creation and customization of test plans to support quality assurance.
MyTestManager delivers a centralized cockpit to plan and monitor automated tests campaigns.
MyTestRecord manages record keeping rules across modules to cope with internal compliance needs
MyTestIntegration is a gateway to connect third parties’ test tools to maximize testing scope.
The first automated test services powered by the platform are API testing to support open banking requirements and Level 3
acquiring and issuing testing. The platform also supports EMV® 3DS services and has been submitted to EMVCo for access
control server (ACS) component qualification, with additional component testing to follow. Other automated tools will be
gradually added in the coming months.
TrustAPI+ in the News

Open banking expo Programmable web ctmfile

Retail banker international Banking frontiers IBS Intelligence

TrustAPI+ in the News

Winner in the Finnoviti & Technoviti

Fintechfinance news 2020 awards Finextra

Financial IT
2. Cigniti (Revenue: USD 147M, HQ: India)
The testing services they offer for the particular banking and payments sector products such as:

1. Testing of core banking systems (Temenos, FIS, Infosys – Finacle, D3, Iris core, Phoebus, Fiserv, Flexcube)
2. Open banking
3. No code, low code solution for BFSI

Their pre-built test cases across all leading banking and core banking products accelerate the overall test design
cycle by 60%

API testing solutions for

4. Real-time payments
5. Third-party payments
6. Payment gateways
7. Identity based payments

Partnerships
• Smartbear
Cigniti – Tools for Testing
Tool 1: iNSta - low-code/no-code test automation platform

Can be used for testing Temenos Transact

Advantages:

1. Export the entire code into any Java or C# framework and manage it on their own.
2. AI-powered, self-healing platform that allows to quickly scale the test automation
suites
3. Comes with in-built-frameworks, libraries and 3rd party plugins

Key clients

• Heartland payment systems

• Exeter finance
• DBS
• Atom Bank
3. Yethi – Tenjin Automation Software
(Revenue: USD 12M, HQ: India)

End-to-end software testing for faster innovation. Automated test suite powered by an intuitive and path-breaking
algorithm that automatically “learns” the software’s UI and “re-learns” any changes without manual assistance

Tenjin, that doesn’t require script-writing and has robotic capabilities to learn/re-learn application changes,
allowing easy and fast test executions.

Can test digital banking products such as Infosys Finacle, Oracle financial services, Appzillon, iGTB, Core OLTP
(Online Transaction Processing) solutions such as Oracle Flexcube, Infosys Finacle, Temenos, Calypso, ICSFS, TCS
BaNCS, FIS, Orchestrade, Capital banking solutions
Tenjin Connect – API testing automation

Automated API-level Testing with Early Test Adoption

Key features of Tenjin Connect:

1. Agile testing solutions

2. No-code automation
3. PSD2/ Open banking ready

Clients

• Creditaccess Grameen
• Kanbawza Bank, Myanmar

Pricing

Tenjin automation test solution: ₹10,00,000 (The most advanced software test automation platform that can reduce
testing maintenance overheads and reduce the cost of software testing by 30% for your enterprise applications.)
4. APImetrics – Real-world API monitoring
(USD 5 M, HQ: USA)

Production Monitoring for Open Banking and Fintech APIs

• Supports Banks, TPP (third party providers), PISP (Payment Initiation Service Provider), regulated by PSD2, OBUK
(Open Banking UK), FDX (Financial Data Exchange) or other rules.

• APImetrics have a powerful and effective way to monitor critical APIs.

• Take the pain out of monitoring and compliance for all open banking needs.

• Accurate, independent SLAs, governance and performance data of CMA9 (Open banking initiative from
Competition and Markets Authority – Nine Banks - AIB Group UK, Bank of Ireland, Barclays Bank, HSBC Group,
Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide building society, NatWest Group, Northern Bank Limited, Santander UK),
PSD2, regional standards worldwide.

• Can capture the API incidents such as content errors so that the engineers can do a detailed examination

• Used by FISPAN – contextual banking solutions, Cashplus bank, British high street bank, New Zealand ministry of
business
5. Iliad Solution – T3 Switch (Revenue: USD 8 M, HQ: UK)
Production Monitoring for Open Banking and Fintech APIs

• It is cloud and container native

• It can orchestrate any number of disparate APIs to build real-life end-to-end test cases. These can be mixed with
other technologies such as ISO 20022 and ISO 8583 to reflect how institutions will embed API calls to enhance
existing services.
• The t3 platform can drive all the testing for ISO 20022, OpenAPI (REST and Grpc) and over 200 legacy interfaces
at up to 5000 transactions per second.
• Even ahead of building services it can get you testing earlier.
6. Ostia Solutions – PSD2 Open API Testing
(Revenue: USD 450K HQ: Ireland)

PSD2 Open API testing

• Fully compatible with Continuous Integration/ Continuous Development and Agile development methodologies
• Multiple testing environments can be created.
• Even ahead of building services it can get you testing earlier.
• No chance of corruption of your environment from other TPPs that may occur with shared test systems.
• Potential to prototype new applications at very low cost.
7. TestGrid – TestOS (Revenue: USD 5 M, HQ: USA)
Test the web, mobile, hardware, and IoT device

API testing - REST, SOAP, PostMan, Newman, MITM, etc.

It integrates almost all the tools in one platform with complete automation, so you don’t need to code, waste time,
and hire pro software testers.

Key features of TestOS

• Cloud testing of browser and mobile devices

• Ability to automate test cases using simple keywords and use AI to auto heal and access the Code.
• Install TestOS on your premise. Bring your own hardware or we can ship our hardware.
• Web based full scale API testing. Now you don’t need tools like Postman.
• Rich Insights for UI, Device and API performance with Benchmarking. Ditch the need of third party tools.
• Auto generates Static Application Security Testing (SAST) report

Clients

• Azlo (Neobank)
• Aflac (Insurance provider)
7. TestGrid – TestOS (continued)
Pricing

Link to pricing: https://www.testgrid.io/pricing

8. Apilogic – Test & monitoring
(Revenue: USD 2.5 M, HQ: Netherlands)

Includes 3 services:

1. Performing integration tests of the dedicated PSD2 interface, including services:

PIS - Payment Initation Service

AIS - Account Information Service
CoF - Confirmation of Funds

2. Constant 24/7 monitoring of the dedicated PSD2 interface on production environment in accordance with the
requirements of RTS (Regulatory Technical Standards) and FSA (Financial Service Authority)

3. Support for performing functional tests

9. Testing Pays (Revenue: <5M, HQ: Ireland)
They offer powerful simulators of payment APIs for you and your team to use in your projects. Say goodbye to
unreliable sandboxes and hard-to-remember test cards.

Advantages

• Our simulators enable your team to roll out new payment options in half the time. The more payment options
for customers, the greater your revenue.
• Our simulators give you the controls and tools to analyse and find improvements for your customer checkout
experience.
• Prevent software bugs that cause payments errors and outages. Also includes load test simulators
What the market wants?
1. A fully automated plug and play API test tool and real-time monitoring system that can support various banking
API standards such as PSD2, CMA 9, Sahamati (AA), ISO 20022
2. Should be capable to do API functional testing, security testing, Data driven testing, and API mocking
3. Should be able to do CI/CD with seamless and reliable test automation
4. The test system should be self-healing , adapt to the changes of the application, protect the client from the risks
of non-compliance, and reduce testing rework
5. A frictionless API testing experience to deliver the expected API quality, security, reliability and performance
6. Should integrate well with Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platforms such as Jira, Microsoft Visual
Studio Team Services (VSTS) and Microsoft TFS (Team Foundation Server)

Self-Healing Tests is an approach in which machine learning helps with the maintenance of automated tests. Self-
Healing, the automation of test automation, recognizes changes in the “system under test” and automatically
adapts the test execution so that the tests remain functional.
API testing market (source: Databridgemarketresearch)
API Testing Market is Expected to Reach USD 3,265.52 Mn (USD 937 Mn in 2021) By
2028 with top players like IBM, Oracle, Astegic Inc., Axway (Fr), Bleum, Broadcom.,
Cigniti, Cygnet Infotech

Key players:
• Bleum
• CA Technologies
• Cigniti
• IBM
• Infosys
• Micro Focus
• Oracle
• Parasoft
• Qualitylogic
• Runscope
• Smartbear Software
• Tricentis