November 2004

Yorkshire Building Society (YBS), one of the founder members of the LINK cash machine network has been enjoying many years of first-class results and support with their Lexcel developed LINK simulator for LINK certification. As a result, YBS has selected Lexcel’s ATM solution for testing migration to a new host platform and upgraded their EMV to test chip card (ICC) transactions.

YBS needed to upgrade its host system to be able to offer new services and comply with the requirements for Triple DES and EMV – prompting them to move to a new hardware and software platform. The project included a large element of testing to ensure that the live system migrated seamlessly, as well as analyzed their new developments. Previously, YBS used a physical ATM to manually generate test transactions, a very time and resource-consuming process, susceptible to human error. It was obvious that automation would not only make this work go faster with fewer errors, but Lexcel TestSystem ATM would actually allow them to test faults and errors that were not possible using a real ATM.

Regression testing and analysis were accelerated by a factor of five and YBS was able to test error conditions that are difficult, or in some cases, impossible to simulate with a physical ATM. All of this was managed and completed from their QC and UAT tester’s desktop configurations.

EMV testing is significantly more complicated than testing for magnetic stripe cards because of the interaction between the card and the ATM. Lexcel TestSystem ATM - Diebold EMV behaves in exactly the same way as an ATM, using a chip card reader and an EMVCo approved EMV kernel.

All scripts were documented and recorded as completed for later use as a Benchmark Script as well as to share and modify as new enhancements are implemented.