Payment Regression Testing: Ensuring Revenue Health

Nobody enjoys going to the doctor. But (almost) everyone understands why it’s important. Preventative care helps avoid potentially tragic health outcomes later. Routine check-ups, vaccinations and tests may feel inconvenient or scary, but they are essential to catching or preventing major medical issues.

Payment regression testing is a bit like preventative care. Also called payment health checks, these ongoing payment regression testing efforts ensure the health of your payment systems over the long term. Organizations must work proactively to avoid costly disruptions.

Payment systems support a huge matrix of payment instruments, devices, OSes, platforms and geographies. A single issue, such as a misconfigured API or an expired certificate, can lead to revenue loss and frustrated customers. Yet supporting that vast array is an overwhelming task for many internal teams.

In this blog, we’ll make a realistic case for payment health checks as part of a broader payment testing program.

Why payment regression testing is essential

The complexity of global payment systems creates countless opportunities for issues to arise, especially on a global scale. From region-specific payment methods like Pix in Brazil or WeChat Pay in China to global instruments like credit cards, BNPL and even loyalty program redemptions, each payment mode introduces variables.

Ongoing payment validation is the key to success, yet many organizations only test payments during a release. This approach neglects validation when tools that facilitate the payment flows change, or when new standards emerge. Payment testing isn’t a one-and-done; it’s about maintaining the long-term health of your payment ecosystem and mitigating the risks of operational downtime or customer churn.

Consider the impact of payment failures. False declines alone cost U.S. eCommerce companies $81 billion in lost revenue in 2023, according to a PYMNTS Intelligence report. Another report by the firm indicated that 47% of retailers reported that these failures significantly harmed customer satisfaction.

Unnoticed defects quickly translate to substantial revenue loss and damage to customer trust. The consequences of failed payments harm brand reputation, increase operational costs and drive away loyal customers. Proactively addressing these challenges through payment regression testing ensures businesses maintain a seamless and reliable customer experience.

The limits of internal teams and sandbox testing

Many organizations rely on internal teams and sandbox environments to manage payment testing. However, these approaches fall short when addressing the complexities of real-world scenarios. Internal teams often lack access to the diverse range of payment instruments, devices and geographies needed for comprehensive testing. Remember that this testing matrix evolves every day as customer preferences and options change.

Additionally, release-based testing — focused solely on new updates or features — overlooks issues introduced by ecosystem-wide factors, such as third-party provider changes or regulatory updates. Sandbox testing environments, while useful, cannot replicate the full scope of real-world transactions. Many issues arise only in production environments, including:

• payment processing errors, including failed payments, incorrect charges, declined transactions, 3DS errors, infinite loops, error messages, incorrect refunds and currency conversion issues;
• account or subscription management issues, such as saving or changing payment methods, incorrect subscription details, inability to cancel and discount code errors;
• checkout and order issues like being unable to complete checkout or add an address, failures without error messages, no confirmation emails and incorrect order totals formatting;
• issues with purchasing or loading gift cards
• localization and display issues, including incorrect localization and 3DS display issues.

Payment regression testing fills these gaps. Payment health checks ensure that payment systems function seamlessly under real-world conditions, catching defects far sooner than you would notice through revenue decline.

Combining payment regression testing with proactive strategies

The most effective payment testing strategies combine regression testing with proactive measures to optimize transaction success rates. By collaborating with experienced payment testing providers, businesses can detect issues like false declines, and iterate regularly to support new payment methods and devices.

Start by defining the top priorities for your businesses — the top geographies, payment instruments and devices. These are the cornerstones of the payment testing coverage. Use real, in-market customer transactions to understand where actual defects manifest. From there, serve the secondary and tertiary markets and geographies on a rotating basis to ensure coverage.

The problem is, even if you have global employees or a customer base willing to conduct sporadic tests, it still falls short of the type of consistent, programmatic payment testing that ultimately leads to success. Internal teams also present gaps in many ways, including when they fail to provide the right testing artifacts, or to provide them in a timely manner. Test the new, test the old, and leverage insights to refine solutions and processes — easier said than affordably done.

How Applause’s payment regression testing drives results

Applause offers a robust payment testing solution designed to address the limitations of traditional approaches. With a global community of more than one million testers, Applause provides real-world validation that goes beyond automated tools or internal teams. We validate payments in real markets with real customers using real instruments and devices. We then provide your teams with the artifacts, including screenshots, videos and error messages, to enable you to quickly act on any defects, all while safeguarding tester data. Real work, no guesswork.

Flexibility is key to our approach. Applause’s Payment Testing solution enables businesses to allocate capacity for both release-specific testing and health checks. This flexibility promotes high ROI while enabling organizations to maintain the health of their payment systems and stay agile in response to new developments.

We do this work for clients every day. For example, a media client of ours that operates a digital marketplace needed help validating ongoing global payments. Through health checks with our Payment Testing solution, we discovered that PayPal payments had ceased processing in certain Asian countries. The company’s telemetry did not indicate an issue, but we were able to find it through our programmatic payment testing, helping them avoid six-figure (or greater) revenue loss.

Another media company recently approached us with an issue involving in-app purchase payments going unnoticed. The company uses a canary release strategy. The company’s metrics weren’t aligned to detect payment issues like these, however, so what should’ve been an issue for a small segment of the user base eventually rolled out, undetected, to the full base of customers. Problems with bank issuers, 3DS authentication providers or networks, we’ve seen it all.

Our matrix-based strategy prioritizes testing for high-revenue geographies, critical payment methods and the devices most commonly used in those regions. This focused approach ensures maximum ROI while maintaining comprehensive coverage and healthy payment systems.

The value of Applause is reflected in real-world outcomes. According to IDC, organizations leveraging Applause’s solutions realize an average annual benefit of $3.79 million, including $1.4 million in risk mitigation savings. Additionally, Applause saves businesses 681 hours of staff time per release, enabling internal teams to focus on strategic priorities.

Investing in payment regression testing isn’t just about catching defects — it’s about safeguarding your business against significant risks. Preventing even one major payment issue can save significant revenue, protect brand reputation and build customer trust. Make the critical investment in the long-term health of your payment ecosystem.