Context
A prominent payment processor in India, known for its cutting-edge fintech solutions, was on a mission to enhance its acquirer host debugging capabilities for Visa and Mastercard.
With a growing base of modern merchants, they aimed to streamline their debugging and certification processes by simulating the scheme-specific issuer response. With this, they wanted to accelerate time-to-market and reduce manual effort.
Despite having in-house debugging and certification teams, they encountered significant challenges:
- Lack of specialized tools to effectively debug and test their acquirer host
- Lengthy manual debugging cycles impacting production deployment timelines
- The need to automate testing so that they can focus on the go-to-market implementation
After evaluating multiple tools for acquirer host testing, the payment processor chose Payhuddle’s Lithos for its comprehensive capabilities.
Why did they choose Lithos?
Lithos was a strategic fit for their needs, offering a combination of debugging and certification readiness testing. Here’s why it stood out:
Comprehensive Functionality
- Dual-use tool for both debugging and certification readiness testing
- Supports ISO 8583:1987 & ISO 8583:1993
- Cloud-based simulator for issuer, acquirer, and network testing
- Visa and Mastercard acquirer host debugging support.
Efficient Test Management
- Centralized test case management
- Integrated test cases, testing, and automatic analyzer
- Configurable test cases to align with specific certification requirements
Flexibility and cost-effectiveness
- Deployed as a service (SaaS model) with pay-as-you-go pricing
- Scalable, modular, and pluggable architecture, allowing future extensions for other payment schemes.
Responsive Support
- Fast support SLAs with responses in hours and not days.
- Proactive and agile customer service.
How did Lithos help improve certification confidence?
Lithos helped this payment processor in debugging their acquirer host in a smooth, structured workflow:
Host system setup
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Pre-certification debugging using Lithos Host Simulator
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Test case execution with integrated analyzer
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Issue identification and resolution
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Automated reporting and progress dashboards
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Pre-certification confidence
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Final certification from Visa and Mastercard
- Streamlined work flow: Lithos allowed the team to self-debug and validate systems in-house, reducing dependency on formal test windows
- Real-time analysis: The real-time analyzer and test case traceability improved accuracy and confidence before entering the certification phase
- Scalability: The platform’s modular architecture enabled potential extensions to other payment types like QR
Benefits for the customer
- Avoided network scheduling delays by pre-validating host systems and ensured faster time-to-market.
- Debugging minimized the certification times and ensured certification in one iteration.
- Centralized test cases and dashboards reduced manual efforts and overhead.
- Reduced administrative costs with a subscription-based pricing model.
- Enhanced readiness for future payment types with an extendable platform.
Lithos has proven to be a powerful enabler for payment processors and banks looking to accelerate certification timelines, simplify host debugging, and move quickly and confidently in the Visa and Mastercard certification ecosystem.