Talking Turkey in Istanbul

The phrase ‘talking turkey’ widely refers to discussing something honestly and directly. Iliad Solutions did just that with two of its valued partners at a recent conference in Istanbul where delegates shared the latest in payments innovation. Jill Pyper, Chief Operating Officer, Iliad Solutions, takes up the story.

“The conference was staged in conjunction with Enqura, experts in financial services digital transformation, Serquo, leaders in financial device connectivity and payment solutions, plus the Iliad team.

It was a meeting of ‘payments’ minds in a city where famously East meets West – perfect for companies offering complementary services to financial institutions and payment providers around the globe.

Forward thinking industry developments were discussed between all three contributing businesses creating a catalyst for future innovation and opportunity in the payments industry. The networking breaks also provided unparalleled opportunities to carry on the conversation with colleagues and fellow practitioners.

Conferences like this foster innovation, collaboration, and professional development, all of which are crucial for the growth and efficiency of the payments industry.

In summary, this was a hugely valuable time in the perfect location. My only regret was not having more time to explore Istanbul. For the football fans amongst you, the conference venue overlooked the Besiktas ground in view of the Bosphorus. It obviously wasn’t Bramall Lane but a pretty impressive stadium all the same! (You can take the girl out of Sheffield but you can’t take Sheffield out of the girl!) Istanbul, I will be back.”

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If you are interested in Jill’s personal contribution to the conference please read on. Here is a summary of her presentation:

‘Launching with confidence – prioritising speed and safety through effective payment testing’

In the fast-paced world of software development, where innovation and strict deadlines often collide, and test windows get squeezed, ensuring quality quickly becomes a top priority. Efficient testing plays a crucial role in achieving this goal. Prioritising speed and safety through testing can lead to better outcomes for all stake holders. Implementing platforms such as t3 (our industry leading payment testing platform) with the appropriate strategies and methodologies accelerates the testing lifecycle, providing quicker feedback on the software’s functionality, performance, and reliability.

T3 achieves this by offering service virtualisation in a single platform (devices, schemes, APIs) removing dependency on physical devices and ensuring all end points in a transaction lifecycle are emulated. Our platform has been specifically designed as an enterprise tool which means this capability is distributed to and shared amongst all test teams, engineering groups and service groups 24/7 globally.

Newer initiatives such as ISO 20022 and Open Banking present several unique challenges for testing. While offering numerous benefits in information exchange and standardization, it can appear more complex and integration with legacy systems can be a significant challenge. Effective testing is crucial.

Legacy systems often employ different data structures and formats compared to the newer messages. This necessitates data mapping and transformation to bridge the gap and ensure compatibility. This can be a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. The newer technologies are constantly evolving to accommodate new functionalities and security updates. This necessitates frequent test updates to ensure compatibility and functionality.

t3 can facilitate data mapping and transformation between the legacy system format and the newer format, streamlining the conversion process. Equally, we can test  APIs that may have been implemented as an intermediary layer. Comprehensively testing various message types and scenarios involving multiple stakeholders can be challenging due to the standard’s vast scope and potential for diverse use cases. Real-world interactions with other financial institutions can be difficult and require collaboration across various entities. t3 can simulate all end points proving transparency in the messages and the results allowing clarity of the new types.

The t3 platform allows for the creation and execution of automated Test Scripts significantly speeding up the testing process. Automation allows for rapid and repetitive execution of test cases, freeing up manual testing resources for more complex scenarios. This balance of automation and manual testing speeds up repetitive tasks but ensures thorough coverage. Implementing parallel testing allows multiple test cases to run simultaneously, reducing overall execution time, additionally all tests can be integrated into the CI/CD pipeline for continuous feedback

Our fully integrated end to end flow means that functional test can be reused and accessed to cover both Performance (stress/nft) testing and clearing generation/validation.

All of this functionality can be further extended to use as a core base set of tests to allow the delivery of a self-certification capability for participants increasing transparency and removing friction from the on-boarding experience. To date, our customers have reported a reduced on-boarding time and expense by up to 65%.

Financial Institutions are often organised by “silo”, with many test teams, each with their own test tools/simulators/test data and ways of working. Modern transactions cross many silos in an organisation; this is problematic with a legacy approach to testing, innovation in testing is essential for progress, safety, and quality assurance.

Often when an organisation encounters the need to test a new payment technology, they buy “another” stand-alone simulator, not only costly from a license point of view but also from a setup, training and ongoing maintenance point of view. Additionally, this does not guarantee any interoperability between the message types. t3 can handle the test requirements of any kind of payment (multi silo). The t3 platform greatly simplifies things and allows complex “cross-silo/technology” tests to be created, removing needless and expensive integration and cross-tool analysis.

By strategically creating tests, development teams can optimize resources, reduce costs, and deliver a robust, dependable end product. Remember, faster testing doesn’t mean compromising safety—it’s about achieving speed without sacrificing quality. The reuse of tests and test assets throughout the development process to address issues promptly, automation and reuse is easy, allowing t3 to keep up with DEVOPS and Agile deployments. Our customers report cost savings of up to 50% versus traditional simulation methods. Iliad Solutions’ technology focuses on removing friction during new payments initiatives, ensuring quality from day one.