---
title: "How do Shopify stores in Eastern Europe handle cash on delivery: COD forms, fees and order confirmation"
description: "Shopify treats cash on delivery as a manual payment method: the order is created unpaid, no money moves through Shopify, and there is no built-in fee or confirmation step. Stores that sell mostly on COD fill those gaps with apps: a COD order form that bypasses checkout, phone confirmation by one-time code, rules that hide COD, and fees added by an app. Refunds for cash orders still happen outside Shopify."
date: 2026-10-11
lang: en
canonical: https://goingstellar.ro/research/cash-on-delivery-shopify-eastern-europe/
author: Going Stellar
publisher: GOING STELLAR S.R.L.
topic: Desk research / Cash on delivery
license: CC BY 4.0
alternate_ro: https://goingstellar.ro/ro/cercetare/plata-ramburs-shopify-europa-de-est/
---

# How do Shopify stores in Eastern Europe handle cash on delivery: COD forms, fees and order confirmation

*Shopify treats cash on delivery as a manual payment method: the order is created unpaid, no money moves through Shopify, and there is no built-in fee or confirmation step. Stores that sell mostly on COD fill those gaps with apps: a COD order form that bypasses checkout, phone confirmation by one-time code, rules that hide COD, and fees added by an app. Refunds for cash orders still happen outside Shopify.*

> Desk research · Cash on delivery · 2026-10-11 · https://goingstellar.ro/research/cash-on-delivery-shopify-eastern-europe/

## Key points

- Shopify treats cash on delivery as a manual payment method: COD orders arrive pending, the merchant marks them paid after receiving the cash, and no money moves through Shopify.
- Shopify has no native fee for choosing cash on delivery; merchants either use a separate COD shipping rate, which buyers can mismatch, or an app that adds the fee.
- Public apps that hide or rename payment methods, including COD, work on the Basic plan and higher, while custom apps built with Shopify Functions are limited to Shopify Plus; a store can activate at most 25 payment customization functions.
- COD-heavy stores reduce refused parcels with one-time-code phone confirmation by SMS or WhatsApp, partial advance payments, COD fees and rules that hide COD by region, cart value or product.
- Refunds for COD orders are paid outside Shopify, usually by bank transfer, because Shopify never held the money; store credit is the documented route that stays inside Shopify.

## The short answer

On Shopify, cash on delivery (COD) is a manual payment method. The order arrives marked unpaid, the merchant marks it paid after the courier hands over the cash, and Shopify itself moves no money. Shopify offers no native COD fee, no phone confirmation and no way to refund cash. Stores in Eastern Europe, where COD is common, typically add three kinds of app: a COD order form with optional one-time-code phone verification, payment rules that hide COD for risky carts or regions, and an app or workaround that adds a COD fee.

This article is for merchants setting up COD on Shopify and for people building tools for them. We checked each platform fact in Shopify's own documentation and each app fact on the app's App Store listing.

## How common cash on delivery is

For Romania, the most specific recent figure we could trace comes from an April 2025 payments analysis by The Paypers, which relays data from the Romanian Association of Online Stores (ARMO): between **60%** and **65%** of e-commerce orders are paid by cash on delivery. That is an industry association estimate relayed by a trade publication, not a measured national statistic, and we found no equivalent figure for the other Eastern European markets that we could check at a primary source.

Whatever the exact share, the practical consequence is the same. A store selling on COD carries a cost that card stores do not: the parcel that is refused at the door and comes back. This is usually called RTO, return to origin. Most of the tooling below exists to reduce RTO before the parcel ships.

## How cash on delivery works inside Shopify

Shopify's help centre lists cash on delivery among its manual payment methods, alongside money orders and bank transfers. A merchant activates it under the payments settings. The name *Cash on Delivery (COD)* is reserved by Shopify for the suggested method, so a store cannot create a custom method with that name.

Orders paid with a manual method appear as pending on the orders page. After the money is received, the merchant has to mark the order as paid manually, then fulfil it as usual. Shopify states that third-party transaction fees are not charged on manual payments.

Two things are missing from this flow by design. There is no step that checks whether the buyer really intends to receive the parcel, and there is no setting that adds a charge when the buyer picks COD. Both gaps are filled by apps.

## COD order forms that bypass checkout

The most visible pattern on COD-heavy stores is an order form on the product or cart page that creates the order without the buyer going through Shopify Checkout. The leading example is **Releasit COD Form & Upsells**, whose listing describes advanced cash on delivery without Shopify Checkout, through a popup or embedded form. On the day we checked, the listing showed a rating of **4.9** from **2,495** reviews and the Built for Shopify badge. Opened from Romania, the listing also says *Based in Romania*, but that label sits under *Popular with stores like yours*; the developer address on the listing is in London.

The same listing advertises phone verification with a one-time code by SMS or WhatsApp, limiting postal codes, blocking IP addresses, confirmation via SMS or WhatsApp, and custom fees, plus upsells and quantity offers in the form. The form exists to shorten the purchase to a few fields, and the verification exists because a shorter form also makes fake orders easier.

## Confirming COD orders before they ship

Confirmation means getting a signal from the buyer, after the order and before the parcel leaves, that the order is real. The common mechanism is a one-time code (OTP) sent to the buyer's phone. **COD King**, a Built for Shopify app whose listing showed **4.9** from **971** reviews when we checked, describes verifying COD orders via SMS or WhatsApp to reduce fake orders.

The same listing shows the other levers merchants use against RTO: partial COD payments, where the buyer pays an advance online to secure the order; COD fees to nudge buyers toward prepaying; discounts to convert COD orders to prepaid; and rules that show or hide COD by location, cart value or product. Each one trades a little conversion for fewer refused parcels, and the right mix depends on how often a store's parcels actually come back.

## Hiding COD with payment customizations

Shopify's supported way to change which payment methods a buyer sees is a payment customization, built on Shopify Functions. According to the developer documentation, a payment customization function can rename, reorder and hide payment methods, and a store can activate at most **25** payment customization functions. Setting payment terms and hiding specific placements are limited to Shopify Plus.

Shopify's help centre states that stores on the Basic plan or higher can install public apps that customize payment methods at checkout, while custom apps built with Shopify Functions are available only on Shopify Plus. In practice, a store not on Plus uses an App Store app to hide COD.

Apps such as **Kip: Sort Hide Payment Methods** describe rules that hide, rename or reorder methods by customer country or location, shipping method, cart total, cart weight, products and customer tags, including hiding cash on delivery in chosen countries. The documentation we read does not describe payment customizations adding a fee.

## COD fees: there is no native setting

Shopify's payment settings do not offer a charge tied to the payment method. In a Shopify Community thread on adding a COD fee, a community member and a COD-app vendor both answered that it is not possible to add a fee to cash on delivery directly from Shopify. The vendor's answer carries a commercial interest; the community member's does not, and nothing we read in Shopify's documentation contradicts it.

Merchants use two workarounds. The first is a separate shipping rate labelled as COD with the fee built in. The weakness, pointed out in the same thread, is that nothing stops a buyer from picking that rate and then paying by card, or picking the card rate and then choosing COD. The second is an app that adds a fixed or percentage fee to COD orders, which is offered by the COD form and confirmation apps above.

## Refunds and couriers: what stays outside Shopify

Shopify's refund documentation describes refunding to the original payment method, to store credit, or to both, and notes that some payment methods cannot be refunded to the original method. It does not describe a refund flow for cash on delivery, and because no money moved through Shopify for a COD order, there is nothing for Shopify to send back. A COD refund is therefore paid outside Shopify, usually by bank transfer, and recorded in the admin. Store credit is the one documented route that stays inside Shopify.

Courier integration for pickup points and labels comes from courier apps. For Packeta, for example, the App Store lists third-party apps that add a pickup-point map to checkout, print labels from the admin and, on some plans, track COD payments.

## Where the reports were wrong

**1. The COD share.** The report put COD at about half of Romanian orders. The figure we could trace, ARMO data relayed in April 2025, is **60%** to **65%**. Both are estimates; the report's was lower and unsourced.

**2. No Shopify app for Packeta.** The report said Packeta had no Shopify app. The App Store lists third-party apps that connect stores to Packeta, with pickup points at checkout and label printing. It may be true that Packeta itself publishes none; the integration exists.

**3. Stale listing figures.** The report gave COD King a **5.0** rating from about **900** reviews and Releasit **2,458** reviews. The listings showed **4.9** and **971** for COD King and **2,495** for Releasit when we checked. Listing numbers move weekly; quote them with a date or not at all.

**4. Claims of absence.** The report stated that no app on the App Store collects bank details for COD refunds, and that Shopify's own return labels cover only the United States. We could not confirm either at a primary source. Absence is hard to prove in a store with thousands of apps, so both stay out of the findings above.

## Method

We started from an AI deep-research report on cash-on-delivery apps for Eastern European Shopify stores. It was written by an AI research engine and mixed listing data, market estimates and a product pitch. We removed the pitch and the pricing analysis, picked the platform and app facts a merchant would act on, and checked each on 11 October 2026: Shopify's help centre pages on manual payments, checkout customization and refunds, Shopify's developer documentation on payment customization functions, the App Store listings of the apps named, a Shopify Community thread on COD fees, and The Paypers analysis for the market share.

We could not verify: the number of Romanian stores using each app, the claim that one courier's official app requires a higher Shopify plan, ratings for several smaller courier and risk-scoring apps, and the absence claims listed above. Those were dropped.

## Limitations

The only market share we could trace is for Romania, and it is an association estimate, not an official statistic; the title's wider region rests on the same mechanics applying, not on measured shares elsewhere. App listings describe what a vendor says the app does, not whether it works on a given store. The COD fee finding rests on a community thread and the absence of a setting in Shopify's documentation, not on a Shopify statement that the feature does not exist. Shopify's checkout and plan rules change, so plan availability should be checked again before building on it.

## Sources

1. [Shopify Help Center: Manual payment methods](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments/manual-payments)
2. [Shopify Help Center: Customizing payment methods and delivery options at checkout](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/checkout-settings/checkout-customization)
3. [Shopify Dev: Payment customization function API](https://shopify.dev/docs/api/functions/latest/payment-customization)
4. [Shopify Help Center: Refunding orders](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/orders/refund-cancel-order)
5. [Shopify App Store: Releasit COD Form & Upsells](https://apps.shopify.com/releasit-cod-order-form)
6. [Shopify App Store: COD King](https://apps.shopify.com/cash-on-delivery-cod-order-confirmation)
7. [Shopify App Store: Kip: Sort Hide Payment Methods](https://apps.shopify.com/kip-customize-payment-methods)
8. [Shopify App Store: Packeta pickup points and labels (happyapps.cz)](https://apps.shopify.com/packeta)
9. [Shopify App Store: Zasilkovna / Packeta connect](https://apps.shopify.com/export-orders-to-zasilkovna-cz)
10. [Shopify Community: How can I add an extra charge for cash on delivery service?](https://community.shopify.com/t/how-can-i-add-an-extra-charge-for-cash-on-delivery-service/177747)
11. [The Paypers: Romania 2025 analysis of payments and ecommerce trends](https://thepaypers.com/payments/expert-views/romania-2025-analysis-of-payments-and-ecommerce-trends)

## Questions and answers

### Can I charge a cash on delivery fee on Shopify?

Not with a built-in setting. Shopify's payment settings have no charge tied to the payment method, and community answers confirm a COD fee cannot be added directly. Merchants either create a separate shipping rate labelled COD with the fee included, which buyers can mismatch with card payment, or install an app that adds a fixed or percentage fee to COD orders.

### How do I hide cash on delivery for some orders on Shopify?

Use a payment customization app. Shopify Functions let an app hide, rename or reorder payment methods, and public apps that do this can be installed on the Basic plan and higher. Typical rules hide COD by country or region, cart total, cart weight, product or customer tag. Custom-built Functions apps are limited to Shopify Plus.

### How do Shopify stores confirm cash on delivery orders?

Most use an app that sends the buyer a one-time code by SMS or WhatsApp after the order, so the order is confirmed before the parcel ships. Some apps also take a partial advance payment or offer a discount for switching to prepaid. The goal is to cut refused parcels, known as return to origin or RTO.

### How do I refund a cash on delivery order on Shopify?

Shopify cannot send the money back, because a COD payment never passed through Shopify. The merchant pays the refund outside Shopify, usually by bank transfer, and records it on the order. Shopify's refund flow also supports refunding to store credit, which keeps the refund inside the store.

### What share of Romanian online orders are cash on delivery?

The most specific recent figure we could trace is 60% to 65% of e-commerce orders, from data by the Romanian Association of Online Stores relayed in an April 2025 payments analysis. It is an industry estimate rather than an official statistic, and other sources give different numbers.

## How to cite

**Cite this as:** Going Stellar (2026). *How do Shopify stores in Eastern Europe handle cash on delivery: COD forms, fees and order confirmation*. GOING STELLAR S.R.L.. https://goingstellar.ro/research/cash-on-delivery-shopify-eastern-europe/

```bibtex
@misc{goingstellar2026cash,
  title  = {How do Shopify stores in Eastern Europe handle cash on delivery: COD forms, fees and order confirmation},
  author = {{Going Stellar}},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://goingstellar.ro/research/cash-on-delivery-shopify-eastern-europe/},
  note   = {2026-10-11}
}
```

Licence. Free to quote with attribution.

## Also available

- This page as HTML: https://goingstellar.ro/research/cash-on-delivery-shopify-eastern-europe/
- Same article in Romanian: https://goingstellar.ro/ro/cercetare/plata-ramburs-shopify-europa-de-est/