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Cash on Delivery — payment collected from the buyer by the courier at the time of delivery.
COD — Cash on Delivery — is a payment method where the buyer pays for the order in cash (or sometimes UPI/card) at the moment of delivery, rather than prepaying at checkout. The courier collects the cash, reconciles with their head office, and remits the amount to the merchant after deducting service charges.
India is still a COD-heavy market. Depending on category and region, COD typically accounts for 55-70% of all D2C orders.
Couriers charge a COD fee on top of standard forward shipping, typically the higher of:
So a ₹2,000 COD order might attract a ₹36 COD fee in addition to forward shipping.
After the courier collects cash, the funds flow through: courier hub → courier head office → courier-to-aggregator transfer → aggregator-to-merchant remittance. Industry-standard remittance cycle is D+5 to D+9.
This means a merchant doing ₹1 crore of monthly COD GMV at a D+7 cycle has approximately ₹23 lakh of working capital permanently locked in the cycle. This locked capital is the single largest cash flow constraint for most Indian D2C brands.
Some logistics platforms offer D+1 or D+0 remittance, which dramatically reduces locked working capital. The math is direct: cutting the remittance cycle from D+7 to D+1 unlocks ~₹19.7 lakh of working capital for a ₹1cr GMV brand — funds that can be redeployed into ads, inventory, or operations.
See our COD calculator for your specific working-capital impact.
COD orders carry 3-5× higher RTO than prepaid orders across every category. The reasons: lower buyer commitment, no payment friction, easier to refuse on delivery, and easier to abandon at checkout if buyer regrets.
The combination of locked working capital + high RTO makes COD operational excellence (verification, allocation, NDR management) one of the highest-leverage areas of D2C operations.
ShipyBox offers D+1 COD remittance as the default for all merchants, and D+0 same-day remittance on Growth and Enterprise plans. See Early COD Remittance for the workflow.