Mobile Banking App Testing and QA Consulting for a Commercial Bank With $3.5B+ in Assets

About Our Client

The Client is a commercial bank with assets exceeding $3.5 billion. The bank renders banking and financial services to over 5 million individuals and 22,000 corporate customers from all major economic sectors, including energy, agriculture, construction, and telecoms.

Mobile Banking Apps Experienced Persistent Quality Issues

The Client relied on its in-house quality assurance team to test its iOS and Android banking apps as they evolved. However, repeating issues across app performance and usability showed there’s room for improving the bank’s testing approach.

The bank decided to involve professional QA consultants to propose enhancements across its current QA workflows. To improve mobile banking user experiences, the bank also needed QA engineers to conduct independent testing of its apps and assist its internal teams with issue triage for resolution.

The Client had a positive experience outsourcing the QA of its web and mobile banking apps to ScienceSoft in the past. ScienceSoft’s testing talents earned a reputation as meticulous, motivated professionals with a solid background in banking IT, so the bank decided to engage the company again.

Independent Testing of iOS and Android Banking Apps

ScienceSoft performed independent testing of the Client’s mobile banking apps. To speed up team onboarding and streamline collaboration, ScienceSoft assigned the mobile QA engineers who had previously tested the bank’s customer-facing apps and already knew the specifics of those solutions.

During the subsequent 4 months, the team conducted targeted quality checks of the apps’ major functional and non-functional aspects:

Functional testing areas

• In-app multi-currency payments, money transfers (including peer-to-peer and cross-border transfers), automated recurring payments, and QR-code-based payments.
• Template management for popular payment transaction types (telecoms, utility, etc.).
• Bank card management, including funds utilization limit control, forced and user-initiated card blocking, card issuance and reissuance.
• In-app push notifications (on executed transactions, card-related events, and more).
• Banking app workflows in the offline mode and with unstable internet connectivity.
• Integrations between the mobile banking apps and external systems (3D Secure authentication systems, OS-native mobile wallets).

Non-functional testing areas

• App usability for target mobile banking user segments.
• App accessibility to the general audience and specifically to users with disabilities.
• App localization across the user locations and regions served by the bank.
• App compatibility with different types of devices, device models, screen resolutions, and OS versions.
• The correctness of app installation, updates, and uninstallation processes in edge scenarios, such as insufficient mobile storage space and interrupted setups.

As a result of control testing, ScienceSoft provided a detailed test report covering our testing methodology, the revealed mobile banking issues, issue severity heatmaps, and resolution guidelines for the bank’s development teams. The report included a comparison of test results across iOS and Android app versions and recommendations for bridging operational and technical gaps to ensure consistent user experiences.

Additionally, ScienceSoft was involved in regression testing for the new releases of mobile banking apps. ScienceSoft’s QA engineers worked with the bank’s testing teams under the Scrumban model, with monthly major releases, weekly planning and retrospective sessions, and daily syncs for flexible task triaging. The engineers wrote plans and cases for smoke, regression, and smart regression tests, ran the necessary testing procedures, and crafted test reports. In parallel, ScienceSoft’s team monitored the bank’s regression testing workflows and shared feedback on process blockers and possible optimizations with the Client’s QA managers.

During the engagement, ScienceSoft’s QA engineers participated in the Client’s monthly QA talent competition alongside its teams. ScienceSoft’s engineers were repeatedly recognized for the high number of cases validated and issues flagged.

Consulting on Mobile Banking QA Process Improvements

ScienceSoft’s QA consultants studied the bank’s QA documentation, including test plans, test cases, defect logs, and release notes. This helped assess whether QA activities were aligned with app complexity, whether test coverage was adequate, and whether the bank’s team had established practices for maintaining tests in sync with evolving requirements.

For deeper insight, ScienceSoft’s QA experts also attended the bank’s release and testing ceremonies. Acting as impartial auditors, they observed daily cooperation among the bank’s QA, business analysis, and development teams, focusing on test planning, defect triage, documentation, analysis, and communication practices across the involved groups.

Having analyzed the findings, ScienceSoft advised the Client on the process-level and technical QA improvements. The Client appreciated ScienceSoft’s recommendations and decided to involve the team in implementing QA process changes. In particular, ScienceSoft’s experts:

• Compiled test design guidelines explicitly tailored to mobile banking apps, including instructions on how to write clear and structured test cases, define acceptance criteria, and formulate conditions for accepting or declining tasks.
• Mapped regular test case review practices with instructions for marking irrelevant cases and removing obsolete scenarios from the repository. As a result, the bank would get a leaner, more accurate test suite evolving alongside its apps.
• Shared ScienceSoft’s best practices on task scoping, test planning, and reporting with the bank’s teams. These practices have proven to enhance QA speed and transparency, expand testing windows, and improve issue detection rates in ScienceSoft’s previous banking software engineering and QA engagements.

Improved Mobile Banking QA Processes and Higher App Quality

ScienceSoft’s advice on mobile banking QA improvements and assistance with change implementation helped the bank establish faster, more consistent in-house testing procedures. Formalized task scoping, early test planning, and standardized reporting improved QA transparency for app development stakeholders and removed last-minute testing and bug fixing pressure. Test case refactoring introduced a lean, maintainable test suite for efficient regression cycles and reduced test storage space by 75%, resulting in lower associated expenses. With the best practices and guidelines shared by ScienceSoft’s engineers, the bank’s QA teams were able to resolve the iOS and Android banking app issues more effectively. This helped improve the apps’ accuracy and performance, resulting in smoother experiences for end users.

Technologies and Tools

• Application testing: Postman, Swagger, Charles Proxy, Android Studio, Figma.
• QA process management: Jira, Confluence, X-Ray, Microsoft Teams, Miro, Testomatio, MindMeister, AllPairs.