We live in a world today where mobility is at its peak. The constant change in consumer behaviour has been a major driving force. The millennials and Gen Z are mobile, technically savvy, and challenging the status quo. With the deep integration of e-wallets, social media and other communication tools, mobile apps have become a powerful force. As the new age consumers are looking for accessibility, convenience, and more control, the high availability of the app, smooth functioning, and new feature roll-out is imperative for your business. Hence, testing mobile apps plays a crucial role in meeting customer demand. 

In fact, mobile app testing is crucial for any business needing a mobile presence, especially for banks with digital payment systems working 24/7. After all, the global digital payments market was expected to reach $111.11 billion in 2023, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 15.5% from the previous year. 

Imagine how difficult it can be if the apps don’t function as intended. For example, you have taken a rideshare to return from your workplace, and when you are about to pay, suddenly, the payment app doesn’t work. It’s worse if you don’t carry cash or cards and prefer digital payments. How embarrassing to waste the other passengers’ time searching for an alternative option. 

It is why BFSI companies are always highly cautious before launching any app and every time they introduce any new feature. Banks must ensure that every aspect of their payment app is thoroughly checked and tested, including its functionality, compatibility, and security. To ensure they achieve this with the highest level of quality and security, the banks embrace mobile test automation. With rapid changes that need real-time testing, automation is the answer to speed up the process. 

However, testing mobile apps is far from a simple process. The speed of the technology, the diversity of platforms and devices, and the size of the platforms make it harder for testers to get the job done. 

Mobile Test Automation with TerrA  

In totality, all the benefits of mobile test automation are improving customer experience, including improved app quality, enhanced security, reduced costs, improved user experience and better test coverage.   

Challenges of mobile automation 

However, mobile test automation is a growing industry with challenges, such as mobile devices having different operating systems than a desktop. Here are some of the specific challenges of mobile test automation: 

• Device and Display fragmentation 
• OS fragmentation 
• Localisation/location dependency 
• Network variability 
• Numerous types of mobile applications 

• Automation 

Methods to deploy mobile tests 

There are three major ways to test mobile apps: 

• Simulators – You must thoroughly analyse factors such as the location and the trends in that location to determine the simulators you need for effective mobile testing. For example, most mobile devices in India are Android, while those in London or New York are iPhones. So, to test an app to be deployed in a specific market, you need more simulators for mobile versions widely used in that market. 
• Physical Devices for testing – No matter how authentic the simulators are, they can’t entirely mimic how the app might run on the actual device. So, you require some physical devices to ensure the app runs as per specifications before the release.  

• On Cloud – This is another helpful way to do mobile testing where the devices are on the Cloud. Various organisations offer Cloud-based platforms for mobile testing where you can access different combinations of devices based on your purchased subscription.  

So, to ensure that a banking app is perfectly functional, you must test it across multiple devices, operating systems and browsers. However, each of the above is either incomplete on its own or highly costly. For example, the first option, i.e. simulators that developers and testers also use, can never be 100% authentic; it can only be accurate up to 60%. The second option, testing on actual physical devices, can be highly costly if you purchase all types of devices to deliver precise testing. Finally, the third option, testing on a cloud platform with a massive number of devices, can also become costly based on the subscription and its limitations. 

For the banks to confirm and ensure that their app runs seamlessly as per requirements without downtime, they need to test at least 10 to 20 devices. Also, you must consider that mobile devices cover tablets, the usage of which is relatively high in different areas of Europe. 

Discover the game-changing benefits of TerrA 

Now that we understand the various challenges of mobile test automation and the methods to deploy tests on mobile devices let’s see how our enterprise test automation platform TerrA helps you cost-effectively overcome these challenges. 

TerrA is a Next-gen test automation tool allowing testers to test the mobile apps on various simulators or connect to cloud device farms. It has an in-built module called TRAM for mobile testing. TRAM supports Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) feature. This feature allows testers to connect their mobile device for testing or connect to other devices in the network to test mobile applications. For example, a user in India would be able to connect to the mobile in the U.S. and carry out testing. 

Some of the other critical features of TRAM module are: 

• Test the devices across various operating systems Windows, Linux and Mac 
• Test directly on real devices or emulators 
• Conduct live interactive testing of your mobile apps 

• Drag and drop the APK files 
• Schedule your test runs 
• Parallel testing 
• TerrA agent will take care of installing the dependencies 

In today’s digital world, a consumer uses different channels to complete a banking activity. So, testing the applications based on the customer journey is crucial. Testing teams must design heterogeneous test scenarios with test cases across applications like mobile, web, mainframe, API and others.  

TerrA allows you to drag-drop test cases across the application(s) built on different technologies. It seamlessly integrates with other CI/CD tools and automates test processes, thus enabling your organisation to move towards creating a fully automated value chain. 

TerrA is adaptable to different development methodologies and can be integrated into a DevOps environment to enable Continuous Testing. Also, TerrA has an in-built payment simulation tool (SiPay), which makes it a perfect choice for automation. 

Conclusion 

To summarise, mobile test automation has become increasingly important as mobile is an integral part of our daily lives. Also, while making payments through mobile, we all need an easy-to-use, fully functional payment app in our daily lives, making our lives less stressful. 

As the usage of most apps culminates in making payments, payment apps play a pivotal role in meeting our demands and expectations. Thus, empower your business with mobile testing automation: not only does it accelerate your Go-To-Market timeline, but it also cultivates delighted, steadfast customer relationships. 

Contact us to learn how Tristha can help you with mobile test automation.