APPROACHES AND TOOLS FOR AUTOMATION OF MICROSERVICE ARCHITECTURE TESTING

Microservice architecture has become a foundational paradigm in the development of contemporary FinTech platforms due to its inherent flexibility, scalability, and fault isolation properties.Yet the shift from monolithic systems to distributed service ecosystems significantly complicates the testing process.The reliability of a microservice-based application depends not only on the correctness of individual services but also on the stability of their network interactions, asynchronous communication patterns, and evolving API contracts.These factors introduce high levels of architectural uncertainty, making traditional testing approaches insufficient and reinforcing the need for robust automated solutions tightly integrated into CI/CD pipelines.The study is based on the hypothesis that applying a comprehensive automated testing framework, combining API testing, consumer-driven contract testing, and multi-layered integration testing, can markedly enhance the stability, predictability, and security of FinTech systems built on microservice principles.The research methodology includes a systematic review of scientific publications, a comparative analysis of leading automation tools, the construction of UML-based models illustrating inter-service communication, and an experimental evaluation of testing effectiveness using metrics such as execution time, defect detection rates, failure propagation, and system stability indicators.The results demonstrate that the structured use of automated testing approaches substantially reduces integration failures, accelerates regression testing cycles, and improves overall service interoperability under real-world conditions.The findings also confirm that contract testing plays a critical role in preventing breaking changes in independently deployable services, while integration testing remains indispensable for revealing emergent behaviors in distributed environments.The proposed framework offers FinTech organizations a structured model for optimizing software testing processes, enhancing system resilience, and supporting continuous delivery in highly dynamic microservice ecosystems.