COD fraud costs Shopify merchants twice: once on the failed delivery, and again on the return shipping. A customer places a Cash on Delivery order, receives the package, and refuses to pay — or simply is never home. The product comes back damaged or not at all. The shipping cost is paid both ways.
The most effective prevention is not eliminating COD entirely — it is restricting COD to the situations where fraud risk is lowest.
High-Risk COD Scenarios to Block
- High cart values — fraud risk increases with order value; hide COD above £100 or £200
- First-time customers — new accounts with no order history are higher risk
- Certain product categories — electronics, luxury goods, and high-return categories
- International orders — COD outside your domestic market is harder to manage
- Specific regions — some postcodes or regions have statistically higher refusal rates
Reducing COD Fraud with Conditional Payment Rules
Paymod lets you hide Cash on Delivery based on any of these conditions — without removing COD for all customers.
Hide COD above a cart threshold
Rule: Hide COD when cart total is greater than £150. Low-value orders keep COD as an option. Large orders are forced to prepay — dramatically reducing fraud exposure on high-value transactions.
Hide COD for first-time customers
Rule: Hide COD when customer has 0 previous orders. Once a customer has completed one prepaid order, trust is established and COD becomes available. This is a common pattern in high-COD markets like India and the Middle East.
Hide COD for specific product tags
Tag high-fraud-risk products and hide COD whenever those products appear in the cart — regardless of cart value or customer history.
Balancing Fraud Prevention with Conversion
Removing COD entirely in markets that rely on it will reduce conversions. The goal is to restrict it intelligently, not eliminate it. Paymod’s conditional approach lets you keep COD available for the low-risk majority while removing it for the high-risk cases.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I show COD only to customers with a verified address?
You can set conditions based on shipping country and region. Postcode-level verification requires a custom flow, but country and region-based rules work natively.
Does restricting COD affect my checkout conversion rate?
Targeted restriction (by cart value or customer history) has minimal conversion impact because most affected customers are either high-risk fraud attempts or can easily switch to card payment. Blanket removal is what hurts conversion.
Install Paymod to reduce COD fraud on Shopify with targeted conditional payment rules — no code, no Shopify Plus required.
