Virtual Payments Environment Simulation for Transaction Testing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current payment system testing lacks the ability to simulate actual transactional volumes and project future performance, making it difficult to identify faults and root causes of failures effectively.
Innovation Solution
A virtual payments environment is created using a user interface that allows users to configure scenarios with specific payment environment characteristics, including hardware components and transactional paths, utilizing activity engines and blockchains to model and process payment information, thereby generating performance data for analysis.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If historical data is used for payment system testing, then testing can be performed with existing data, but the ability to simulate actual transactional volumes and project future performance is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a virtual copy of the payment system environment that replicates real-world transaction flows, hardware components, and processing paths. This virtual environment allows testing with simulated transactional volumes that mirror actual usage patterns without requiring access to real payment data or live systems, thus achieving adaptability while maintaining manageable complexity through abstraction.
2Measurement precision
If real payment data is accessed for testing, then accurate performance evaluation is possible, but security and regulatory compliance challenges arise
Solution Approach 1:
The virtual payment system environment acts as an intermediary layer between test evaluators and real payment systems. It generates synthetic transaction data that preserves the statistical characteristics and processing behaviors of real payments while eliminating security risks. This intermediary approach maintains measurement precision by accurately modeling real-world scenarios without requiring access to sensitive actual payment data.
3Difficulty of detecting and measuring
If the payment system is tested under various scenarios, then potential faults can be identified, but the complexity of configuring and managing test scenarios increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the payment system into distinct virtual components representing different hardware and processing stages (POS devices, payment gateways, processors, networks). Each segment can be independently configured and tested under specific scenarios. This segmentation allows systematic fault identification by isolating issues to particular components while simplifying scenario management through modular configuration of individual segments rather than managing monolithic complex test setups.
Data Source
AI summary
A virtual payments environment can be used to simulate and test performance of a payments system. A plurality of characteristics and settings can be used to generate and/or determine one or more scenarios associated with a payments environment. The one or more scenarios associated with the payments environment can comprise a plurality of activity engines that simulate real-word components of a payments environment. Payment information can be introduced to the one or more scenarios and activity engines can be used to test and/or verify the integrity of the payment information as it traverses a transactional path through the payments environment. Performance data associated with the payment information can be accessed and review in order to determine a number or successes and/or failures associated with processing the payment information as it transverses the payments environment.