💳 How to Accept Cash on Delivery (COD) in Tunisia?

Here’s exactly what you need to set up to start accepting Cash on Delivery (COD) orders, from choosing a carrier to tracking collected payments.

1. Understanding Cash on Delivery (COD)

Cash on Delivery (COD) allows a customer to place an order without paying online immediately: they pay in cash when the package is delivered to them.

In practice:

• The customer places an order on your store without entering credit card details.
• The carrier delivers the package and collects the amount from the customer.
• The carrier then remits this money to the seller, usually according to a defined payment cycle (weekly, upon confirmed delivery, etc.).

COD remains central to Tunisian e-commerce because a large portion of buyers still don't trust online payments, or simply prefer to check the product before paying. A store that doesn't offer this option automatically deprives itself of a significant part of its potential customer base.

2. What to Prepare Before Offering COD

Before activating COD, make sure you have:

• A product or online catalog, with clear product descriptions.
• Clearly displayed prices, with no ambiguity about what's included.
• A decided delivery fee: most Tunisian carriers now cover the entire territory, so the question is less about "which areas to serve" and more about "what price to charge my customers."
• Customer contact information collected correctly in the order form (name, phone, address).
• A reliable delivery partner capable of managing COD collection and remittance.

Without these elements in place, activating COD will only shift the problem further down the process.

3. Choosing a Delivery Service that Manages COD

The choice of carrier often determines whether your COD experience will be smooth or painful. Check several points before committing:

• COD Collection: Does the carrier actually collect the amount from the customer upon delivery?
• Geographical Coverage: Does it truly serve all the areas where you sell?
• Delivery Tracking: Can you and your customers track the package in real-time?
• Returns Management: What exactly happens when a customer refuses the package?
• Settlement of Collected Money: How often is the collected money remitted to you, and in what form?
• Order Synchronization: Does the carrier offer an integration (API) allowing you to manage your shipments directly from your store, without manual re-entry? On IG60, for example, this synchronization allows you to track orders and packages from a single place rather than juggling multiple interfaces, and to print delivery slips directly without going through the carrier's interface.

It's not necessary to compare all Tunisian carriers one by one — the important thing is to check these points for the one you choose.

4. Configuring Cash on Delivery on Your Store

Once your carrier is chosen, here's the concrete sequence to activate COD:

1. Activate COD in your store's payment settings.
2. Define your delivery fees and understand how potential returns are charged by your carrier.
3. Configure the order form to capture the necessary information (see next section).
4. Test a complete order yourself, from product selection to validation, to verify that everything displays correctly and nothing blocks the customer.

On a platform like IG60, this configuration is done directly from the dashboard: you activate COD, enter your delivery and return rates by zone, and synchronization with partner carriers happens without additional development.

5. Optimizing the Order Form

An overly long form is one of the primary causes of order abandonment. Only ask for the essentials:

• First and last name
• Phone number
• Precise address
• Governorate, and delegation/locality if necessary for delivery

Avoid adding superfluous fields "just in case" — each additional field is another opportunity for the customer to abandon. Also, verify that the form remains simple to fill out on mobile, as the majority of your visitors will likely order from their phone.

6. Confirming Orders Before Shipping

This is one of the most overlooked — and most costly — aspects of COD in Tunisia. An order placed online is not yet a confirmed sale: it's an intention to purchase. Before shipping, you must verify:

• A confirmation call or message: contact the customer to validate the order.
• The phone number: Is it valid and reachable?
• The address: Is it complete and consistent?
• The product and quantity: Do they match what the customer actually wanted to order?
• Suspicious signals: incomplete order, contradictory information, unusual behavior.

Never ship a raw order without this verification step — it's one of the main sources of refused packages and unnecessary return fees. On IG60, the customer reliability score relies on a database of several million packages to assess a customer's return risk even before calling them, which allows you to prioritize verifications on truly risky orders rather than treating everything at the same level. To understand how this data concretely helps protect your margins, consult our article on reducing the return rate. To go further on how to conduct this confirmation call effectively, consult our article on the confirmation script.

7. Reducing Fake Orders and Returns

Beyond confirmation, several practices sustainably reduce your return rate:

• Systematically confirm, without exception, even for "small" orders.
• Provide clear product information: accurate photos, precise sizes, honest description — to avoid disappointments upon delivery.
• Display transparent delivery fees from the beginning of the process, not just at the last step.
• Follow up after the order if the customer doesn't respond immediately.
• Do not promise unrealistic delivery times, which create frustration and refusals upon arrival.
• Monitor your abandoned and returned orders to identify recurring patterns (product, geographical area, carrier) rather than treating each case in isolation. Our article on recovering abandoned carts details how IG60 helps you act even before the order is officially abandoned.

8. Tracking Orders and Payments

Once your orders are confirmed and shipped, you need to be able to track two separate flows:

The order cycle: Order → preparation → shipment → delivered → payment collected → remittance to seller

The anomaly cycle: Canceled → refused → returned

Without a clear view of these statuses, it becomes easy to lose track: a package marked "delivered" but for which the money has not yet been remitted, or a "returned" package that you have not yet physically recovered, are two very different situations that require distinct tracking. With IG60, you can organize your orders and verify your payments and returns with these statuses clearly visible: a delivered but unpaid package appears distinctly from a returned but unreceived package, which avoids unpleasant surprises at the end of the month.

9. Should You Only Offer COD?

No. The best approach is generally hybrid: offering COD and online payment.

Some customers prefer to pay on delivery out of habit or distrust of online payment; others, on the contrary, prefer to pay immediately by card to avoid carrying cash, or to benefit from faster payment. The goal is not to impose a single method, but to reduce friction at the time of payment — the more relevant choices you give your customers, the fewer sales you lose due to a simple payment preference.

10. How Much Does Cash on Delivery Cost?

There isn't a single magic number — the actual cost depends on several components that need to be added up:

• Delivery: the basic rate charged by the carrier.
• COD collection service: some carriers charge specific fees for managing collection.
• Returns: cost of return transport, often at a different rate than delivery.
• Failed deliveries: unsuccessful delivery attempts, sometimes charged even without actual delivery.
• Online payment gateway, if you also offer this payment method as a complement.
• Advertising and customer acquisition: the cost to generate the initial order, to be integrated into your overall profitability calculation.

The real cost of a COD order is not limited to the delivery price. It's by adding up all these elements — delivery, returns, failures, acquisition — that you get the true cost of a sale, and therefore your actual net margin.

Manually tracking all these cost items quickly becomes complicated once the order volume increases. On IG60, an expense management module allows you to record these different costs (delivery, advertising, returns, etc.) and have clear visibility into your actual profits versus your expenses, rather than reconstructing this calculation manually in a spreadsheet.

11. COD Launch Checklist

• [ ] COD activated on the store
• [ ] Delivery rates configured
• [ ] Order form tested on mobile
• [ ] Customer confirmation process ready
• [ ] Delivery tracking available
• [ ] Returns management process defined
• [ ] Order statuses configured
• [ ] End-to-end test order completed

FAQ

How does Cash on Delivery work in Tunisia?

The customer orders without paying online, then pays in cash to the carrier upon receipt of the package. The carrier then remits this money to the seller according to a defined payment cycle.

How to offer COD on an online store?

You need to activate the option in your platform's payment settings, define your delivery and return fees, configure a simple order form, then test a complete order before actually launching the option to your customers.

Which carrier to choose for COD?

Evaluate each carrier on its ability to collect COD, its actual geographical coverage, the quality of its delivery tracking, its returns management, the frequency of remittance of collected money, and the possibility of automatically synchronizing your orders with your store.

Who collects the money from the customer?

It is generally the delivery person or carrier who collects the payment directly from the customer at the time of delivery, before remitting this amount to the seller.

When does the seller receive the money?

This depends on each carrier's specific payment cycle — some remit money weekly, others after delivery confirmation. It's important to know this timeframe before committing, especially for managing your cash flow.

How to reduce refused orders?

Systematic confirmation of orders before shipment (phone, address, product) remains the most effective lever, complemented by clear product information and transparent delivery fees from the outset.

Can you offer both COD and online payment?

Yes, and it's generally recommended. Offering both options reduces friction at the time of payment, as each customer can choose the method that suits them best.

Is COD suitable for dropshipping?

COD can work in dropshipping, but it requires particular attention to delivery times (often longer) and order confirmation, as the risk of refusal or return has a direct impact on the already tighter profitability of this model.