With the ongoing rapid changes in the EMV payment regulations, testing and certifying a POS, ATM, mPOS, Transit, & AFD has become a more complex process.

The payments industry is now facing a crunch in finding the experienced hands and right resources who can understand the EMV and technical terms, testing procedure for different schemes, certification guidelines, and go-to market implementation.

As you know, without terminal and card simulators, manual testing is time-consuming and error-prone as the test cases and transaction rules change for different schemes and regions. You should also ship the terminals to your testing team and test lab, which adds to the cost. It has also become difficult to exhaustively cover edge case scenarios manually, which is resource-intensive and highly likely to produce inconsistent results. 

Here’s where terminal and card simulators have become the need of the hour. With a simulator in place, you can simulate any terminal and test case scenario. The simulator can simulate the predefined behaviors that are applicable to the test cases. It will reduce the testing costs for acquirers, payment processors, and terminal vendors as the necessity for shipping your terminals to the testing team and test labs is avoided.

As a payment processor, kernel developer, merchant, and scheme here are the use cases that a terminal simulator can solve for you:

• Difficult to replicate field issues during testing
• Construct a response automatically for the transaction requests from the card
• Checking card applet production issues instead of checking with the original terminal
• Replicate scheme message generation
• Replicate transaction generation
• Checking for scheme’s accurate message format and customized formats and lengths
• To get the entire lifecycle data from the terminal - which is not possible to get from the actual terminal
• Card performance testing
• Send messages in ISO 8583 or any other formats

As a payment processor, kernel developer, merchant, and scheme here are the use cases that a card simulator can solve for you:

• Kernel developers can use them for EMV Level 2 unit testing 
• Terminal application developer can debug L3 behaviors
• Acquirers and processors can use it for simulating multiple country cards
• Ability to customize terminal configuration before simulation

How an integrated card and terminal simulator can help you save time in solving field issues in EMV terminal testing and certification

• Centralized Process: In a centralized system, all card images and terminal simulator configurations can be stored and managed within a single centralized system.
• Quicker debugging: Identifying issues with card personalization can be immediately followed by simulation testing to identify how they affect the terminal's response, leading to faster debugging cycles.
• User-Friendly Testing: The integrated solution simplifies the testing process by offering exhaustive scenarios configuration options.
• Resolving Field Issues: Terminal Simulator can identify missing or incorrect data in fields like cardholder names or expiry dates.
• Testing Country-Specific Cards: Card simulators can personalize cards with different country codes. By simulating transactions with these cards, testers can ensure the terminal correctly interprets the country code and applies the appropriate processing rules (e.g., currency conversion).
• Unit Testing Level 2 Kernel: Simulators can isolate and test the core functionalities of the payment terminal's processing software (Level 2 kernel). It allows focused debugging and ensures the kernel handles various card scenarios correctly.

This integrated solution can help you in the following scenarios

1. By avoiding field issues that may arise after release, we can conduct comprehensive testing of all scenarios. It underscores the importance of your role in the process, as poor network connectivity, incomplete transactions, and testing configurations of different regions often limit physical testing. Issues due to multiple currencies or international transactions 
2. Combining different terminal models and card types in testing to replicate different interoperable issues 
3. The simulator, which can capture detailed logs and data, plays a powerful role in real-time debugging. It makes it easier to diagnose the issue before the terminal is deployed in the market, giving you a robust tool for your work. 
4. With this integration, remote testing is enabled, as the testers do not want to be physically present to run the tests. 
5. Live and constant scheme updates and proprietary scheme updates in the card and terminal reduce the testing and certification timelines.
6. It reduces the impact on the environment, as the reliance on cards and terminals is reduced, contributing to less e-waste and sustainable business practices.

Feel free to connect with us at info@payhuddle.com to see how we can partner with you and build a customizable solution for you.