Building a Nigerian Event Ticketing Platform: Architecture & Payment Guide

The Nigerian Event Tech Opportunity

Nigeria hosts thousands of events monthly — from church conferences to music concerts and professional summits. Custom ticketing platforms outperform generic solutions by enabling brand control and lower fees.

Core Architecture

Build on Next.js with a Prisma/PostgreSQL backend on Neon DB. Model events with flexible ticket types: Standard (first-come), Voting Contest (pay-to-vote), and Invite-Only (seating maps).

Paystack Webhook Integration

Never fulfil tickets on frontend payment confirmation. Always wait for Paystack's webhook POST to your server before marking a ticket as paid. Verify the signature header using your secret key.

Preventing Duplicate Tickets

Use database-level unique constraints with an idempotency key (payment reference + event ID). This prevents race conditions when users double-click payment buttons.

Seating Arrangements

Model seats as individual records with status (available, held, sold). Implement a 10-minute hold mechanism using background jobs (BullMQ) to release unpaid holds.