Digital Payment Controls for Internal Auditors Training Course

Course overview

Digital payment environments create audit exposures that do not fit neatly into traditional cash, accounts receivable, or IT general controls reviews. Card acquiring, payment gateways, mobile wallets, real-time payment rails, APIs, tokenisation services, merchant onboarding and automated settlement introduce high transaction volumes, multiple third parties and complex data hand-offs. Internal auditors need to determine whether payments are authorised, complete, accurate, timely, secure and reconciled—not simply confirm that a policy exists. This course equips auditors to identify control gaps before they become fraud losses, customer remediation events, regulatory findings or material financial-reporting errors.

Participants examine the full payment lifecycle, from customer initiation and authentication through authorisation, clearing, settlement, chargebacks, refunds and general-ledger posting. They learn to build a payment-process risk and control matrix, test access and segregation-of-duties controls, assess API and tokenisation controls, validate reconciliation design, and use data analytics to detect duplicate payments, unusual refunds, split transactions, dormant merchant activity and settlement exceptions. The course also applies PCI DSS v4.0.1 and COBIT 2019 requirements to practical audit planning and evidence evaluation.

Delivered over five instructor-led days in the classroom or live online, the programme combines payment-system walkthroughs, audit-file reviews, control-testing workshops and analytics exercises using realistic transaction data. Participants work through a simulated digital-payment audit and leave with a reusable audit work programme, payment risk and control matrix, sample analytics tests, evidence request list and a prioritised reporting template. A certificate is awarded on completion.

The course is designed for internal auditors who already understand core audit practice and now need credible, hands-on capability in fintech and digital-payment assurance. It is equally valuable for audit managers building consistent coverage of payment platforms, outsourced processors and technology-enabled finance operations.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Map an end-to-end digital payment lifecycle and identify control points across initiation, authorisation, settlement and posting
• Construct a payment-process risk and control matrix covering fraud, operational, financial-reporting, cyber and third-party risks
• Test user access, privileged access and segregation-of-duties controls within payment applications and administration consoles
• Evaluate API authentication, tokenisation, encryption and interface-monitoring controls using defined audit criteria
• Perform reconciliation testing between payment processor files, bank settlement reports, merchant records and the general ledger
• Analyse payment populations in ACL Analytics and Microsoft Excel to identify duplicate, anomalous and unreconciled transactions
• Assess payment control design against relevant PCI DSS v4.0.1 and COBIT 2019 control expectations
• Produce a risk-rated audit report and practical remediation plan for a digital-payment control review

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Internal Auditors — who need to audit payment platforms, processors and digital transaction flows with defensible testing methods
• IT Auditors — who assess application, API, access and change controls supporting payment services
• Audit Managers — who need consistent audit programmes and risk coverage for fintech-enabled finance operations
• Financial Controls Auditors — who test settlement, reconciliation and general-ledger accuracy in high-volume payment environments
• Fraud Risk Auditors — who investigate payment anomalies, refund abuse, merchant misconduct and transaction manipulation
• Risk and Compliance Assurance Professionals — who review outsourced payment providers and payment-security control obligations

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience of internal audit planning, walkthroughs, control testing and audit evidence evaluation. Familiarity with basic financial-process concepts—authorisation, reconciliation, journal posting, exception handling and segregation of duties—is assumed. Participants should be comfortable working with spreadsheets and reviewing transaction extracts; prior SQL or ACL Analytics experience is helpful but not required. No programming, payment-platform administration or PCI certification is required. Those without prior exposure to card payments, payment gateways or API-based systems should expect to spend additional time with the pre-course payment-lifecycle reading provided.

Training methodology

The instructor leads structured sessions using payment-flow diagrams, sample processor reports, control narratives and audit working papers. Participants conduct walkthroughs of a simulated gateway-to-settlement process, identify risks in small audit teams, and test sample controls against defined criteria. Hands-on analytics exercises use transaction extracts to investigate refunds, duplicates and reconciliation breaks in ACL Analytics and Microsoft Excel. Each day closes with a practical output that feeds the final capstone: an audit plan, risk and control matrix, test scripts, findings and management action plan.

Course outline

Day 1: Digital payment landscape and audit scoping

• Payment ecosystem roles: issuer, acquirer, gateway, processor, merchant and wallet provider
• Card, account-to-account, mobile wallet and real-time payment transaction lifecycles
• Authorisation, clearing, settlement, chargeback and refund data flows
• Payment risk taxonomy covering fraud, operational loss, cyber exposure and financial misstatement
• Payment-process walkthrough techniques and data-lineage documentation
• Risk-based audit scoping for in-house platforms and outsourced payment processors
• Payment control objectives using PCI DSS v4.0.1 and COBIT 2019

Workshop: Participants map a payment gateway-to-general-ledger process and produce a first-draft payment risk and control matrix.

Day 2: Application, access and API control testing

• User provisioning, recertification and termination controls in payment applications
• Privileged-access governance for payment administration consoles and production support
• Segregation-of-duties conflicts across merchant setup, refund approval and reconciliation roles
• Configuration management for payment rules, transaction limits and fraud thresholds
• Change-management testing for payment releases, emergency fixes and parameter changes
• API authentication, authorisation, rate limiting and message-integrity controls
• Tokenisation, encryption-key management and sensitive payment-data protection

Workshop: Participants develop control tests and evidence requests for a payment-platform access, configuration and API review.

Day 3: Settlement, reconciliation and transaction analytics

• Settlement file structures, merchant funding reports and processor fee calculations
• Daily reconciliation design between processor, bank, merchant and general-ledger records
• Completeness and accuracy validation of payment transaction populations
• Duplicate payment, duplicate refund and split-transaction detection routines
• Exception analysis for reversals, failed payments, delayed settlements and negative balances
• ACL Analytics filters, joins, stratification and exception-result documentation
• Microsoft Excel pivot tables, Power Query checks and audit-ready exception logs

Workshop: Participants analyse a payment dataset to produce an exception log for duplicate refunds, delayed settlements and unreconciled transactions.

Day 4: Fraud, third-party and resilience assurance

• Fraud scenarios involving account takeover, refund abuse, merchant collusion and synthetic activity
• Monitoring controls for unusual transaction velocity, value, location and refund patterns
• Merchant onboarding, underwriting and bank-account change controls
• Third-party due diligence, service-level agreements and right-to-audit clauses
• Reviewing SOC reports, penetration-test summaries and processor control attestations
• Business continuity, incident response and payment-service outage controls
• PCI DSS v4.0.1 evidence evaluation and compensating-control considerations

Workshop: Participants assess a processor due-diligence pack and produce a third-party control-gap register with follow-up questions.

Day 5: Audit reporting and payment assurance capstone

• Building a risk-based digital-payment audit programme
• Selecting samples, defining populations and documenting test methodology
• Distinguishing control design deficiencies from operating-effectiveness failures
• Root-cause analysis for reconciliation, access and payment-exception findings
• Risk rating payment audit findings by loss exposure, likelihood and control maturity
• Writing evidence-based recommendations with accountable owners and target dates
• Continuous-auditing indicators for payment control monitoring

Workshop: Participants complete a capstone digital-payment audit file and present risk-rated findings, recommendations and a 90-day remediation plan.

Tools & standards covered

ACL Analytics, Microsoft Excel, PCI DSS v4.0.1, COBIT 2019

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions