Lewis SelbyCo-Founder, Maxme9 min read
To run cash on delivery in Ghana without drowning in fake orders, confirm every order on WhatsApp or by phone before dispatch, ask first-time and far-away buyers for a small MoMo deposit, let customers pay by MoMo at the door, and report only delivered, paid orders to Meta as purchases. That keeps your riders, stock and ad budget working for real buyers.
Why do Ghanaian shoppers still want cash on delivery?
Because paying first means trusting a page they have never met. A buyer who finds you on Instagram or TikTok has no way to know the dress is real, the size is right, or that you will send anything at all. Cash on delivery moves that risk from the buyer to you, which is why it still closes sales that a pay-first checkout loses.
It is not only small sellers who see this. Jumia, which sells in Ghana and several other African countries, says in its 2025 annual report that cash remains the most trusted and most widely used payment method in its markets, and that most of its transactions are completed on a cash-on-delivery basis.
So switching COD off usually means turning away buyers who were ready to pay, and sending them to the next seller on Instagram who still offers it. The better goal is narrower: keep COD for the buyers who need it, make it harder to abuse, and stop paying for orders that were never real.
What do fake and no-show COD orders really cost you?
A no-show order is never free. The rider's trip has to be paid for even when nobody opens the door, and a second attempt means paying again. The item sits off your shelf for days while a real buyer could have had it. Packaging, the airtime and data spent chasing the buyer, and your own time all go with it.
For a sense of scale, Jumia reports that in 2025 failed deliveries made up 25% of its gross cash-on-delivery orders across its markets, and that orders paid online are delivered successfully far more often. That is a large marketplace with its own logistics, not a small Instagram shop, but it shows how big the leak can get.
The hidden cost sits in your ads. If Meta counts every order placed as a purchase, it learns to find more people who place orders, including the ones who never pay. Your cost per purchase looks healthy in Ads Manager while your bank balance tells a different story.
How do you confirm a COD order before it leaves your shop?
Confirm every order before dispatch, ideally within an hour while the buyer still remembers ordering. A short WhatsApp message, or a call if there is no reply, catches wrong numbers, joke orders and changed minds before you spend a pesewa on delivery. Keep a note of numbers that refused a parcel; a second no-show from the same number means payment upfront next time.
On Shopify, cash on delivery is a manual payment method, so each order stays unpaid until you mark it paid, which gives you a natural confirm-then-dispatch step. The Shopify App Store also has COD verification apps that send a one-time code by SMS or WhatsApp before an order is accepted; some add a COD fee or a part-payment. Test any of them with MTN, Telecel and AT numbers first.
Whatever tool you use, the confirmation message does most of the work. Send it from your WhatsApp Business number so the buyer sees your shop name, keep it short enough to read at a glance, and make every detail easy to check. A good one covers four things:
- Repeat the order back: item, size or colour, quantity, and the total in cedis including delivery.
- Confirm the area with a landmark or a GhanaPostGPS address, and agree a delivery window.
- Say how they will pay: cash, or MoMo to the rider at the door.
- Ask them to reply YES. No reply by your cut-off time, no dispatch.
Should you ask for a MoMo deposit or MoMo payment at the door?
A small MoMo commitment, such as the delivery fee, separates serious buyers from browsers. Ask for it on first orders, orders outside your usual delivery zone, and high-value or made-to-order items. A Paystack Payment Page or a Hubtel invoice link makes it one tap for the buyer, and you get a payment record instead of a screenshot.
Payment at the door does not have to be cash. Paystack's Virtual Terminal gives each rider their own QR code; the customer scans it and pays by MTN MoMo, Telecel Cash, AirtelTigo Money or card, and the rider gets a WhatsApp alert showing that payment only, not your balance. At the time of writing (September 2026) it costs 1.95% per payment in Ghana, and Paystack lists Terminals among the features a Starter account cannot use. Hubtel also handles in-person MoMo, card, QR and USSD payments.
Either way, the money goes straight to your business account instead of a rider's pocket, and every delivered order has a timestamped payment behind it. You can also nudge buyers to pay online at checkout with a small reward, such as free delivery, without forcing anyone off COD.
| Method | What it stops | What it costs you | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| WhatsApp or phone confirmation | Wrong numbers, joke orders, changed minds | Your time | Every order |
| One-time code (OTP) at checkout | Fake numbers and junk orders | App and SMS fees | Stores with steady order volume |
| Small MoMo deposit | Buyers who were never serious | Some buyers drop off | First orders, far zones, custom items |
| MoMo at the door via QR | Cash handling and late remittance | 1.95% on Paystack (Sept 2026) | Every rider with a phone |
| Paid online at checkout | Most no-shows | Gateway fee | Repeat buyers, with a small reward |
Which courier service is best for online business in Ghana?
There is no single best one; it depends on where your buyers are and whether you need cash collected. Services operating in Ghana at the time of writing include Yango Delivery (app-based express and cargo delivery, with business accounts), ShaQ Express (delivery across all 16 regions from nine regional offices, plus fulfilment and warehousing) and Ghana Post (EMS and nationwide delivery). This is not a ranking.
Before you hand over parcels, get answers in writing. Do they collect cash or MoMo on your behalf, how quickly do they send it to you, and to which account? What do they charge for a failed attempt, and when does the item come back? Who pays for a lost or damaged parcel, and how is proof of delivery recorded?
If you use your own riders, reconcile every evening: each order that went out should match a payment received or a parcel returned. Riders who collect by MoMo to a business number or a Virtual Terminal QR turn that into a two-minute check instead of an argument.
How do you cut returns and refused parcels?
Many refusals start with a surprise at the door. The colour looks different in daylight, the size is wrong, or the total includes a delivery fee nobody mentioned. Show real photos and a short video of each product, give measurements in inches and centimetres, and put the full total, delivery included, in the confirmation message.
Before dispatch, send the buyer a photo or short video of their packed item on WhatsApp. Say plainly whether they can open and check the parcel before paying, and what happens if something is wrong. Clear rules agreed in the chat stop arguments with riders and cut the number of parcels that travel back to you.
Record why each parcel came back. If most refusals are about size, fix the size guide. If they are about price, show the full total earlier. If they cluster in one area, look at the rider or courier serving it. A simple reason column in your order sheet shows the pattern within a few weeks.
How should you count COD orders in Meta ads?
Count delivered and paid orders, not orders placed. On Shopify, a COD order still completes checkout and reaches the Thank you page, which is where the standard checkout_completed event fires. If your pixel sends that event to Meta as a Purchase, Meta hears about a sale before any money has changed hands, and it optimises toward order-placers.
The fix is to send the real purchase from your server through Meta's Conversions API when the rider marks the order delivered and paid, with the real cedi value and the click identifiers you saved at order time. Send it promptly: Meta's API rejects events whose event time is more than seven days in the past, and the sale only counts for an ad if it lands inside that ad set's attribution window.
Keep an earlier event, such as a custom order-placed event, for your own reporting, and optimise campaigns toward the delivered purchase. When we audit Ghanaian stores that sell on COD, a Purchase firing at order time is one of the first things we check, because it makes Ads Manager look better than the bank. The step-by-step setup is in our guide to tracking cash-on-delivery orders in Meta ads.
If you would like someone to look at your own order flow, confirmation messages and tracking before you spend more on ads, Maxme's free Ads & Store Audit sends you a short video review on WhatsApp within two working days, with the three fixes that matter most.
