How can merchants reduce COD returns?
By confirming orders before shipping, offering COD only to trusted shoppers and baskets, giving discounts for prepayment, sending payment links before dispatch, and asking for a small deposit on risky orders.
In detail
By filtering risky COD orders before they ship and by giving shoppers good reasons to prepay.
Practical measures
- Confirm orders before shipping, by message or call, to catch fake or impulsive orders.
- Offer COD only to trusted shoppers and baskets, for example returning customers or orders below a threshold.
- Give discounts or free shipping for prepayment.
- Send a payment link before dispatch, so shoppers can switch to prepaying.
- Ask for a small deposit on risky orders, credited against the final amount.
Using data
Return rates vary by region, product, basket size and customer history. Merchants that track refused deliveries can adjust their rules: restricting COD where returns are high, keeping it where it brings genuine sales.
What it means for payment operators
Most of these measures depend on the payment options your platform offers. Payment links, wallets, QR payments and instant transfers give your merchants prepaid alternatives that local shoppers accept. Checkout rules can show or hide methods depending on the order. And reporting that puts COD, prepaid and refused orders side by side lets merchants measure what each change achieves, in the same interface they use for the rest of their payments.