Payments & cash on delivery

Alongside online card and UPI payments, a store can offer manual payment methods — ways to pay that the store settles by hand. This page explains how they behave, both for you as a shopper and for the store owner setting them up.

The four kinds of manual payment

When a store owner adds a manual payment method, they pick one of four kinds. The kind decides how the payment behaves — not the name shown to you.

• Cash on delivery — you pay when your order arrives.
• Bank deposit — you transfer money to the store’s bank account.
• Pay in store — you pay in person at the counter.
• Other — anything else the store handles manually.

For the store owner

You choose the kind when you create the method, and it’s fixed after that. You can rename the method and rewrite its description and instructions freely — a “Cash on delivery” method could be shown to buyers as “Pay the courier” — but to change the underlying kind you archive it and create a new one. This keeps behavior predictable no matter what you call it.

Cash on delivery

Cash on delivery is treated specially because the money isn’t in hand yet when the order is placed.

• A store can offer one cash-on-delivery method at a time. Different flavors (cash at the door, UPI at the door) live in that one method’s description, not as separate methods.
• A cash-on-delivery order is always awaiting payment until the store collects it — it can never be set to “already paid,” because the cash hasn’t been collected yet.
• Depending on your store and order, cash-on-delivery checkout may ask you to confirm a one-time code sent to your phone, and may add a small cash-on-delivery fee. These only apply to genuine cash-on-delivery orders — a bank transfer or other manual payment never triggers them.

For example

A store lists “Pay the courier in cash” at checkout. Because it’s a cash-on-delivery method underneath, your order shows as awaiting payment until the courier collects the money and the store marks it collected — then it flips to paid .

When an order counts as paid

Any manual payment that hasn’t been collected yet — cash on delivery or bank deposit alike — leaves the order awaiting payment. While an order is awaiting payment, downloads and gift cards on it are held until the money is in. This protects the store from handing over goods before being paid, and it’s the same whether it’s cash on delivery or a bank transfer.

What you see on your order

Your order and emails show the payment method’s name as the store wrote it. If a generic label is ever needed, it’s honest about the kind: only genuine cash-on-delivery orders say “Cash on delivery” — a bank deposit never gets cash-on-delivery wording.

Canceling before collection

If the store allows self-service cancellation, a pending COD/manual order can cancel its remaining unfulfilled quantities even though payment is still awaiting collection. Every delivery or access action remains blocked until paid.

• If no money was collected, cancellation removes the amount still due and the refund is ₹0.
• If part was genuinely prepaid with store credit, gift card, or captured money, only that real tender can be refunded. Uncollected cash is never turned into a fictional refund.

The store’s policy decides whether cancellation is instant or needs approval, and whether a linked refund is created automatically. See the worked examples in Order & rewards lifecycle.

For the store owner

In your payment settings, manual methods are grouped by kind with a clear label, and your cash-on-delivery method shows any fee and phone-confirmation rules linked to it — so renaming is visibly safe and there’s no way to accidentally change a method’s kind. Cash-on-delivery reports only count genuine cash-on-delivery orders, so bank deposits never muddy your cash-on-delivery numbers.