Transfers

Money moves fast and in all directions today. At the core of all transfers is the concept of time to money — how quickly funds move from one place to another and become accessible to the receiving party — the criticality of which can be evidenced by services that charge a fee to receive funds more quickly, much like expedited shipping prices for products purchased online to be sent to your home. The list of players in the money-movement game is long and ever-growing. Banks, mobile money services, money transfer operators like Western Union and real-time payment providers are among these services.

Applause global client teams are seeing a surge in real-time payment (RTP) options, providing almost instantaneous fund availability, highly regarded in businesses small and large. The 24-hour access to these payment options make them ideal for emergency/urgent transfer scenarios. RTP examples include platforms like Cash App, Venmo, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay and other instant payment rails like the Federal Reserve’s FedNow service, which as of the time of this publication, has exceeded over 1,000 financial institutions in its network.

Testing transfers requires sending testers – with specific sender and receiver accounts around the world –  through various scenarios, and finding these specific accounts is challenging. Other variant requirements may come into play depending on the testing scenario: a need to test on specific global networks, or a spectrum of mobile and desktop devices with a diverse mix of operating systems. For this reason, it can be very challenging for financial institutions and fintechs to internally test. 

Cross-border payments 

International borders add to the complexity of money movement. These pesky demarcations bring with them a host of challenges: varying currencies, fluctuations in exchange rates, compliance with specific anti-money laundering (AML) laws and varying local regulations, having multiple intermediaries in the transfer process and added fees. These issues can create delays, or worse, terminate a transfer or payment.

If money is transferred across borders, how quickly can you see and access the funds? What fees might be added, and when is the user made aware of them?

“Each country has its own regulations,” says Doucet. “The UK, for example, has now passed fee-transparency regulations requiring businesses to clearly list all transaction fees upfront, so there is no surprise to the user at the end of a given transaction. The implications of this are not purely confined to a single country if a given service supports international parties within their UK marketplace. You can imagine the amount of testing required to get this right.”

Cross-border payment testing in India for a global fintech/financial services provider

A global financial services provider knew that credit and debit cards issued outside India were not being accepted at physical merchant locations within India. It understood that the majority of acquirers (intermediaries between the merchant and card-issuing bank) block international card payments due to perceived concerns around fraud or higher commercial rates involved in processing a cross-border card transaction.

To create the most friction-free experience for its cardholders, particularly tourists to India, the financial services provider wanted a deeper understanding of the overall landscape around declined transactions for travelers to India, but didn’t have the infrastructure, processes or personnel to do in-market testing there.

The provider had a bold goal of testing across many major cities in India. It wanted to know very specific insights around store signage and variations of declined transactions, including when merchants would simply decline to process a transaction. It wanted to test cards issued from a specific number of countries as well.

Applause leveraged its global crowdtesting capabilities and fully managed service, and developed the specific testing plan for the targeted cities around the country.

Applause completed the testing in just 43 days and exceeded the goal of delivering 3,000 in-store transaction attempts. The global team completed 3,304 total store visits and tested 3,121 cards. Applause provided a comprehensive report for the financial services company with thousands of data points and related insights, which gave direct paths of action to remedying issues.