How to test a new Global Payments integration

Hey there!

Today, we'd like to discuss our approach to payment testing at Routefusion. Many businesses are often surprised by the challenges they face when testing new cross-border payment rails. However, we've been working on ways to make this process more straightforward at Routefusion.

Testing a global payment integration presents several challenges:

1. Developing a ledgering system that is useful to all your other systems without actually moving any money can get a bit messy.
2. Penny testing in live mode can be a challenge. What if you don't have a bank account in Mexico, France, or any of the other 190+ countries we support, where you could send a few dollars to monitor how things are working?
3. Due to the onboarding, screening, and monitoring required in cross-border payments, replicating the live experience in a test mode is challenging, and edge cases are everywhere.

We've been working on making each of these challenges easier through our integration and implementation process.

Global Payment Testing Network

One of the most significant challenges companies face when expanding payments to new regions is penny testing. Just as you don't want to test in a production environment, you probably don't want your first payment in a new country to be to a live customer until you're confident with aspects like bank account formats and error codes. However, if you don't have your own bank account in that country, you'll have to source one, onboard them, and potentially deal with KYB, etc.

Routefusion has established a network of global partners who can receive small test transactions to expedite testing. We collaborate with these partners to confirm transaction formats and receipt times for each corridor, helping to validate new implementations. In areas where we don't have testing partners, we can assist you in creating a testing plan as part of your implementation roadmap.

Building a Better Sandbox

Routefusion's API sandbox allows you to build and test your integration, and we've recently launched several improvements that make it easier to replicate an end-to-end transaction without actually moving any money.

Now, when you create a transaction in the sandbox, the account balance and currency wallets are updated automatically. This means you can more accurately recreate sample funding records, establish a "test ledger," and generate reporting data from it.

Expecting the Unexpected

Global payments involve onboarding and KYB processes on both sides, ongoing transaction monitoring, variations between bank systems, and more. We test for all the most common watch-outs and errors as part of our implementation process. However, with so many moving pieces, close monitoring after launch is critical.

This is why Routefusion's support model always includes a dedicated customer success manager and direct access to an engineering support team. Our team collaborates with you to resolve onboarding issues, payment failures, and any other unexpected problems.

If we can't entirely replicate everything in the sandbox, rest assured, we'll be there to help you address issues as you scale.

Hope you enjoyed this! Reach out if you have any thoughts or questions!