How to Model Airtime, Data, and Bundle Products Without a Bloated Schema

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Building a prepaid recharge platform requires a product schema that goes beyond a simple amount-and-currency pair, as modern catalogues include data bundles, voice minutes, SMS packs, and combo deals. A practical approach separates purchase price from recipient value, since a £10 payment does not always mean the customer receives £10 worth of airtime. Using an explicit product_type field and a normalized allowances table allows multiple attributes — such as data volume, voice minutes, and SMS counts — to be stored without adding nullable columns for every new bundle type. Validity periods should be stored as structured data fields rather than buried in description text, enabling sorting, user warnings, and analytics. External provider IDs should be retained as reference data but kept separate from the platform's own primary identifiers to maintain clean application logic.

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