Cash on Delivery Shopify Gulf: Setup and Fewer Returns

Cash on delivery on Shopify is easy to enable and hard to manage. In Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf in general, it is the option many customers ask for, especially on a first order, but it is also the source of fake and refused orders that eat the margin through delivery fees both ways. The solution is not to remove it but to manage it: WhatsApp confirmation, clear fees, smart restrictions and incentives for prepayment. This guide explains how.

Why cash on delivery still matters in our markets

Despite the spread of cards, Apple Pay and instalments, cash on delivery remains in demand for practical reasons:

• A new customer who does not know your store and wants to see the product before paying.
• Categories such as electronics and perfume where the authenticity question comes before the purchase.
• Markets such as Iraq where card penetration is limited, and Jordan where it is the first method.
• Customers who do not have a card or do not trust entering its details in a new store.

Removing it means losing all of them. Market details are in eCommerce in Jordan and the Saudi Arabia guide.

Enabling cash on delivery in Shopify

The basic setup is simple:

1. From store settings, open Payments.
2. In the manual payment methods section, add “Cash on Delivery”.
3. Write clear instructions that appear at checkout and in the order confirmation: the amount due, that the courier collects cash, and what happens if the customer is unavailable.
4. Enable automatic WhatsApp order confirmation so no order is left without follow-up.

The important point: Shopify treats a cash-on-delivery order as “payment pending” until you mark it paid manually after collection, so arrange a workflow with the delivery team to update the status regularly, or your financial reports will be muddled.

Cash-on-delivery fees: how to add them without losing the customer

Fees cover the cost of collection and nudge serious customers towards prepayment. The common approaches:

Method	How it works	Note
A COD-specific shipping rate	A higher shipping rate appears when cash is chosen	Simple, but shown as shipping rather than a fee
A fee through a payment customisation app	An app adds a fixed or percentage fee when COD is selected	Clearer for the customer and more accurate in reports
A minimum order value	COD is available only above a set amount	Moves small orders to prepayment
A fee built into the price with a prepaid discount	The price includes collection cost and prepayment gets a discount	The most psychologically accepted by customers

Whichever method you use, announce the fee on the product page and in the cart before checkout, because a surprise at the last step is a main cause of cart abandonment.

WhatsApp order confirmation: the action that changes everything

The unconfirmed order is the root of the problem. The customer orders on impulse, forgets, changes their mind or types a wrong number, and the order is refused at the door. What we apply in every store that accepts cash on delivery:

1. An automatic confirmation message right after the order on WhatsApp with the order number, products, amount and delivery time, asking for a “confirm” reply.
2. Human follow-up after a few hours for anyone who does not reply, by call or message.
3. No shipping before confirmation for orders outside the main cities or above a set amount.
4. A tracking message on dispatch with the tracking link and expected delivery day, so the customer has the cash ready.
5. A post-delivery message asking for a review or offering a repeat purchase.

Our WhatsApp Pilot app sends order confirmation and the tracking link automatically in Arabic and English, connects the store number by scanning a QR code with no WhatsApp Business API required, and its details are at whatsapppilot.esafqa.com. We explain the full workflow in automatic WhatsApp order confirmation.

When to restrict cash on delivery

Not every order deserves the option. The cases where we advise restricting it through Shopify payment customisation or a dedicated app:

• Distant areas where the refusal rate and return cost are high.
• High-value orders above a threshold you set, where the loss from a refusal is large.
• Customers who refused previous orders, by tagging the account or phone number.
• Special-order or made-to-order products.
• Peak periods such as White Friday when the delivery team cannot absorb refused orders.

Conversely, keep the option open for main cities, mid-value orders and new customers, because that is where most incremental sales come from.

Moving customers to prepayment gradually

The goal is not to remove cash but to reduce its share month after month:

• A small discount or free shipping for paying by card, Apple Pay or instant transfer such as CliQ in Jordan.
• Showing electronic payment methods clearly on the product page with their logos.
• Offering instalments for high-ticket products where the customer hesitates to pay in full.
• A repeat-purchase offer on WhatsApp for customers who completed a previous cash order, with a discount for prepayment.
• Measuring the prepaid share monthly and making it an indicator in the monthly store report.

Choosing a gateway that supports these methods is covered in Shopify payment gateways for Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

From our experience

In the Jordanian stores we manage, such as Xmart, which receives hundreds of orders a month from Meta and Google campaigns, cash on delivery remains a main method alongside CliQ and cards. What took the campaigns to a MER above 10x was not removing cash but confirming orders before shipping and measuring performance by delivered sales rather than orders recorded on the platform. The same lesson applies to any store in the Gulf or Iraq: a confirmed order is a sale; an unconfirmed order is just a number.

Conclusion

Cash on delivery on Shopify deserves to stay in our markets provided it is managed: correct setup, announced fees, every order confirmed on WhatsApp before shipping, smart restrictions by area, amount and customer, and incentives that move customers to prepayment gradually. We build this setup within our Shopify store development service. If returns are eating your margin, send us your store link on WhatsApp and we will give you a free first review of its cash-on-delivery setup.