Portfolio Projects That Prove You Can Handle Money

Build: A product listing page → Paystack checkout → order confirmation. Webhook handler that fulfills orders on charge.success with idempotency check (never fulfill twice for the same reference).

What it signals: You understand the full payment cycle, not just the frontend checkout. You handle duplicate webhook delivery. You write tests for the webhook logic.

Document: "Webhooks validated with HMAC-SHA512. References stored in DB before fulfillment — duplicate webhooks return 200 without re-fulfilling. Test coverage: 92% for webhook handler."

Build: Paystack Plans + subscriptions + invoice.payment_failed webhook handler. On failed payment: retry logic (3 attempts at 3-day intervals), email notification to subscriber, graceful account downgrade after exhausted retries.

What it signals: You understand subscription lifecycle, not just one-time payments. You handle the unhappy path. You think about business impact (when to cancel vs. retry).

Document: "Subscription state machine: active → past_due → cancelled. Retry logic: 3 attempts at T+0, T+3, T+6 days. Customer email on each failure. Failed payments logged with gateway_response for analysis."

Build: A two-sided marketplace (e.g., tutors and students). Vendor onboarding creates a Paystack subaccount. Student payment splits between platform and tutor at checkout. Vendor payout dashboard shows balance and transfer history.

What it signals: You understand multi-party payment flows, subaccount management, and split payment configuration. This is a senior-level portfolio project.

Build: A checkout page that detects the customer's location (or lets them choose) and shows M-Pesa STK push for Kenyan customers, Paystack card checkout for others. Both payment paths write to the same orders database and trigger the same fulfillment logic.

What it signals: You understand the African payment landscape, mobile money, and how to build for multiple payment providers without duplicating fulfillment logic.

See building a payments portfolio for how to present these projects effectively.

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