How to add Cash on Delivery to a Shopify store

Cash on Delivery is built into Shopify as a manual payment method. To turn it on, go to Settings > Payments in your Shopify admin, select Cash on Delivery (COD), fill in the two text fields, and activate it. It takes a few minutes and costs nothing extra: Shopify says manual payments don't incur third-party transaction fees.

What is a manual payment method?

A manual payment method is a way of paying that happens outside the online checkout. Shopify lists cash on delivery, money orders and bank transfers as common examples. The shopper places the order without paying, and you record the payment yourself later.

That has two effects you should plan for:

• Every COD order starts as unpaid. Shopify marks orders paid with a manual method as unpaid (pending) on the Orders page.
• Shopify doesn't collect the money. Your courier collects the cash and later pays it to you. You then mark the order as paid in Shopify.

How do you turn on Cash on Delivery?

These steps follow Shopify's help page for manual payment methods. Shopify moves admin menus from time to time, so if a section has a slightly different name in your admin, look for the list of manual payment methods.

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Payments.
2. Find the manual payment methods Shopify suggests. Shopify's help page currently places them in the Payment providers section. Select Cash on Delivery (COD).
3. In Additional details, enter the text you want shown next to the method at checkout.
4. In Payment instructions, enter what the shopper needs to do to pay. Shopify shows this on the order confirmation page after the order is placed.
5. Select the button to activate the payment method.

COD now appears as a payment option on your checkout for every shopper and every order.

What should you write in Additional details and Payment instructions?

Shopify suggests checking with your delivery service first, so your text matches exactly what the shopper must do. Ask your courier whether they accept card on delivery, whether they call before arriving, and whether the shopper can open the parcel before paying. Then write short, plain lines.

Additional details (shown at checkout, next to the method). Say how and when the shopper pays:

• "Pay the courier in cash when your order arrives."
• "Pay cash or card to the courier on delivery." (only if your courier takes cards)

Payment instructions (shown on the confirmation page). Say what happens next:

• "Please keep the exact amount ready. Our courier will call you before delivery."
• "Your order total includes delivery. You pay nothing before your order arrives."

If many of your shoppers read Arabic, you can write each line in both languages. For example, «ادفع نقدًا لمندوب التوصيل عند استلام طلبك» means "Pay the delivery driver in cash when you receive your order." For help choosing the Arabic name of the method itself, see what to call Cash on Delivery in Arabic.

What happens to a COD order in your admin?

1. The order arrives on the Orders page marked as unpaid (pending).
2. You fulfill it as usual and hand it to your courier.
3. When the courier pays you the cash they collected, open the order and mark it as paid from the order details page.

If the shopper refuses the parcel, the order stays unpaid. Decide in advance how you record a refusal (for example, by cancelling the order with a reason), because that makes refused COD orders much easier to find later.

How do you test COD before shoppers see it?

A COD test order costs nothing, because no card is charged.

1. Open your online store in a browser, add a product to the cart and go to checkout.
2. Enter a delivery address and continue to the payment step.
3. Check that "Cash on Delivery (COD)" appears with your Additional details text under it.
4. Place the order. Check that the confirmation page shows your Payment instructions.
5. In your admin, open the order and check that it shows as unpaid, with COD as the payment method.
6. Cancel the test order: open it, select More actions > Cancel order, keep Restock inventory selected, and deselect Send a notification to the customer if you don't want an email.

Shopify's help page on cancelling orders adds that orders paid with a manual payment method can be deleted once they're cancelled or archived. Deleted orders are removed from your admin and from your reports, which keeps test orders out of your numbers.

If your store also has an Arabic checkout, repeat steps 1 to 4 in Arabic to check the text there.

How do you turn COD off again?

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Payments.
2. In the Payment providers area, find the Manual payment methods box and select Manage next to Cash on Delivery.
3. Select Deactivate payment method and confirm.

You can activate it again at any time.

Can you offer COD only on some orders?

Not with Shopify's payment settings alone. Shopify's manual payment methods page has no setting to limit COD by cart total, product, customer or city. Once active, COD shows on every checkout.

To show COD only where it makes sense, you need a payment customization: a small piece of logic that hides, renames or reorders payment methods at checkout. Shopify's help pages describe two routes:

• A payment customization app from the Shopify App Store, which you then activate in Settings > Payments, in the Payment customizations section.
• Shopify's own Checkout Blocks app, which can hide payment methods by rules such as cart total or customer tag. Shopify says this feature is only for stores on the Shopify Plus plan.

Khaleeji COD uses a payment customization of this kind, built for COD only. It can hide COD for rules such as large carts, tagged customers, tagged products, or chosen regions and cities, and it leaves every other payment method alone. For the options in detail, read how to hide a payment method on Shopify and how to hide COD above a cart total.