Cash on Delivery does not make sense for a digital download. Neither does ‘Pay on Collection’ for an online course. Yet if you sell both physical and digital products in the same Shopify store, COD and other delivery-based payment methods appear at checkout regardless of what is in the cart.
The Mixed Catalogue Problem
A customer adds a downloadable PDF guide and a printed book to their cart. COD appears as a payment option — but the PDF cannot be delivered in person. The customer selects COD, the order processes, and you now have an awkward situation where half the order needs payment on delivery and half is an instant download.
The cleaner solution: hide delivery-based payment methods whenever the cart contains a digital product.
Setting Up Digital Product Payment Rules with Paymod
Tag your digital products
In Shopify, add a tag to all digital products — ‘digital’ or ‘download’. This is the condition Paymod will check.
Install Paymod
Paymod supports product-tag conditions. Install from the Shopify App Store.
Create the rule
Rule: Hide Cash on Delivery (and any other delivery-based method) when cart contains a product tagged ‘digital’. Paymod checks the cart at checkout and removes the irrelevant payment methods automatically.
Handling Pure Digital Orders
If a customer’s cart contains only digital products, you may also want to:
- Hide all shipping-related payment methods (COD, Pay on Collection)
- Promote instant payment options (card, PayPal, wallets) more prominently
- Skip the shipping step entirely — Shopify’s digital delivery settings handle this for downloadable products
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I detect digital vs physical automatically without tagging?
Product tags are currently the most reliable condition. If your digital products are all in a specific collection, you can use collection membership instead of a tag.
What about services (e.g. bookings, consultations)?
Services have similar needs — they are not physically delivered. Tag service products the same way and apply the same payment rules.
Does this work for partially digital carts?
Yes. The rule triggers when the tagged product is present in the cart, even if other physical products are also in the cart.
Install Paymod to hide irrelevant payment methods for digital products on Shopify.
