Automated testing of ATMs early in the process when new services are being created for consumers could speed the process of bringing them to market and minimize ATM service interruptions, companies that develop ATM testing software suggest.
Level Four Software Ltd., an ATM software and testing provider based in Dunfermline, Scotland, announced Oct. 12 it will partner with ATM manufacturer and IT services provider Wincor Nixdorf International GmbH to provide automated ATM testing during software development for its customer banks.
By initially working with current clients of both companies, the partners want the automated testing process to eliminate any potential ATM downtime at the bank by working out bugs and confirming the ATM works properly during the introduction of software for new ATM services, Ian Kerr, CEO of Level Four, tells PaymentsSource.
Prospective customers of the newest automated testing process will be current users of Paderborn, Germany-based Wincor Nixford’s multi-vendor ATM application software and Level Four’s standard automated testing.
“The rule with ATM testing is change anything, test everything,” Kerr says.
As a result, banks that use manual testing processes can suffer from technological challenges and ATM service interruptions, Kerr contends.
“The level of testing now required renders manual testing near impossible, so there has been an increasing move to ATM test-automation,” Kerr says.
Testing that used to take 25 days to complete manually can occur in one day with automated testing, Kerr suggests.
The speed of testing ATMs may become a competitive differentiator as new ATM features emerge, Kerr suggests.
ATM terminal manufacturer NCR Corp. recently generated some interest with the announcement that it has developed a person-to-person payment feature for its ATMs (
Consumers have low tolerance for technology outages, one industry analyst says.
“This is an interesting concept [automated testing during new product development] because anything that can keep the banks from experiencing down time with their ATMs can be a benefit,” Patricia A. Sahm, managing director at New York- and London-based Auriemma Consulting Group, tells PaymentsSource.
Banks must weigh the cost of investing in automated testing software against the benefit of minimizing the period of time when ATMs are unavailable during service upgrades, Sahm says.
“If I lost one hour of downtime on my 100 ATMs versus 10 minutes of downtime, and that happened several times a year, I would have to look at how much potential lost business that is compared to what I was paying for the automated testing,” Sahm suggests.
Kerr believes the need for automated testing will grow because many ATMs now use Windows as their operating software.
“While this [Windows] has many advantages, there are risks introduced by security updates and bug fixes issued by Microsoft, which occur on a very frequent basis, and any change to the operating system requires a complete retest of the system,” Kerr says.
Retesting also must occur when a bank introduces a new service that calls for new information screens, which typically for a whole new set of scenarios for the different card types, Kerr explains.
In addition to assuring PCI-DSS compliance, testing work to be completed by Level Four and Wincor includes any changes associated with future conversion to accept EMV chip-and-PIN cards, which will be an extensive process of more than 10,000 additional tests when compared to an ATM supporting traditional magnetic-stripe cards, Kerr says (
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