Test Objectives for Credit Cards

The credit cards or payment card testing most of the time requires you to have a valid set of test data on your backend / stub / test payment gateway. This can sometimes be challenging in Exploratory Testing / Session Based Testing approach as you might not have had upfront preparation to build your test data sets. Similarly on more traditional setup test data might come in too late or just purely wrong.

This is how it usually goes, tell me you have seen this in your organisation.. You have your test strategy to outline the high level test approach, you document it in your Test Plan. Section in the test plan talks about test data and about the process of obtaining it. The process usually is that a test data request is a deliverable of the test team and to be send well in advance to backend provider so that they can build their matching test data in time. Thats all good on paper and as an approach, but what usually happens is that when the test data request is needed, testers are unsure what credit card / payment card types there are, what are the valid card numbers for different types of card issuers and how to identify different error / edge cases tested. A

The solution, you should plan to have a good test coverage across all common credit card providers and also types of common payment related transactions. First have a look at the common credit card numbers below that all pass the Luhn check (e.g. card number validation rules). Then make sure you also have set of #TestObjectives for common edge/error cases.

Example dummy test credit card numbers for all major card providers:

Group	Test Objective
Valid – VISA	4929650861605758
Valid – VISA	4485943428975756
Valid – VISA-13	4532899907669
Valid – VISA-13	4916687573348
Valid – VISA-Electron	4913799459302050
Valid – VISA-Electron	4026176061878617
Valid – AMEX	342269787907623
Valid – AMEX	371141329871449
Valid – Diners	36817133562731
Valid – Diners	30284958217394
Valid – MasterCard	5272714214304400
Valid – MasterCard	5304238005599053
Valid – Discover	6011411130389136
Valid – Discover	6011093033795278
Valid – Voyager	869960950111224
Valid – Voyager	869938596218603
Valid – JCB	3096424357950485
Valid – JCB	3528373068549300
Valid – JCB-15	180053595869851
Valid – JCB-15	180074724760381
Valid – Maestro	6762903497841288
Valid – Maestro	5893702419914569
Valid – Laser	6304828521941637
Valid – Laser	6706296756264196
Valid – InstaPayment	6397107594293152
Valid – InstaPayment	6386198192124082
Valid – enRoute	201470181601610
Valid – enRoute	201406505012647

!! And just to be sure, all these credit card numbers are test numbers, e.g. dummy numbers that just pass the validation checks but are not real credit card numbers. Therefor you should of course only use these as #TestObjectives against your test backends instead of live backend.

Common Test objectives for various error / edge cases when testing Credit cards:

Group	Test Objective
Error case	Credit card type is invalid
Error case	Credit card Declined – Expired
Error case	Credit card Declined – Fraud
Error case	Credit card Declined – Hold Card
Error case	Credit card Declined – Referred
Error case	Credit card Declined – insufficient funds

In addition to the above there are lot of payment gateway related errors that are not card specific, those have been omitted as the focus here is on common #TestObjectives that should be valid for all payments systems using credit cards.

Good Resources:
– Online Credit Card validator by FreeFormatter.com
– Luhn Algorithm Information

Another good resource is the following eBook that includes this and many other Test Objectives + lot more to get you started writing Test Objectives.