Cash on Delivery & Partial COD

COD is where Indian D2C loses money to returns. IndiSell gives you graded control instead of an all-or-nothing switch.

Cash on Delivery drives conversion in India but also drives RTO (return-to-origin) — parcels that come back undelivered, costing you shipping both ways plus blocked stock. IndiSell's answer is graded control, not a blunt on/off switch.

The three COD actions

Every COD decision resolves to one of three outcomes, weakest to strongest:

Partial COD

Partial COD sits between a prepaid discount and a COD block: the shopper pays a token advance online, which makes them committed enough to open the door, while keeping the comfort of paying the rest in cash. You set the advance as a flat amount or a percentage, optionally tiered by cart value.

It's the highest-leverage middle ground — most orders never see the advance, and the ones that do are exactly the risky ones.

Partial COD has its own settings, separate from full COD:

• Its own availability range. Set a min/max order value and min/max cart items for when Partial COD is offered — independent of the full-COD limits. For example: full COD up to ₹2,000, Partial COD ₹2,000–8,000. Outside the range, Partial COD is withdrawn too (the order becomes prepaid-only).
• Its own convenience fee. Charge a different COD fee on partial orders — usually lower, since an advance is already paid online. It can be flat or tiered by cart value. Left off, partial orders use the same fee as full COD.
• Independent of the full-COD switch. Partial COD can stay available at checkout even when full COD is turned off — it just needs a connected payment gateway for the online advance.

Where COD decisions come from

The allow/partial/block outcome is decided per order by your Smart COD rules — risk score bands, pincode rules, same-day caps, order-value caps, and the outside-India rule. This page is the what; Smart COD is the how.

Confirm COD orders before they ship

Blocking risky COD stops the worst orders; COD confirmation catches the rest. When a COD order comes in, IndiSell messages the shopper to confirm it — over WhatsApp and/or email — and their answer lands on the order so you only ship the ones they actually stand behind.

• Confirm / Cancel — the shopper taps a button (WhatsApp) or a link. The outcome writes to the order as a Shopify tag (COD-Confirmed / COD-Cancel-Requested), so your fulfilment can hold until confirmed.
• Silent learning — a customer-cancelled COD feeds Smart COD, so the next similar order scores riskier.
• Multi-touch — send a single ask, a retry after a set delay, or an ordered WhatsApp → email journey.

Set it up