Understanding How A Payment Gateway Works: Concepts, Code, and a Live Build
Every developer woking in the financial technology space runs into the same set of questions eventually: how do payment gateways actually work under the hood? Why do webhooks exist? What's the difference between a token and a session? Where do integrations most often break, and why?
This workshop goes deep on the answers and by the end of the session, you'll have shipped your first working payment integration.
We'll cover:
Concepts: how payment gateways work under the hood. What a token is, why a webhook exists, what happens when a card gets declined and how the system knows what to do about it.
Code: a walkthrough of the Interswitch Payment Gateway (IPG) — Nigeria's most-integrated payment APIs. You'll learn use cases for this API for your various need, the sandbox, the response codes, and the moments most integrations get stuck.
A live build: everyone in the room integrates IPG live, together. We'll walk from signup to your first successful transaction. You'll leave with a working integration that you can extend into your next project.
Who this is for:
Entry-level and mid-level developers who want to understand payment infrastructure - whether you're seeing it for the first time or looking to build a deeper mental model of how the systems you use every day actually work.
New to payment integrations? You've got us. We'll start from the beginning: what a payment gateway is, how the money actually moves, and what your role as a developer is in that flow. You'll leave with the concepts and a working integration in your own code.
Already integrated one? You'll get the why behind what you've been doing: the architectural decisions, the trade-offs, and the places most integrations break in production.
What you need
A laptop
A stable internet connection