Cash on delivery in Europe is a regional habit, not a continental one. It still pays for about half of online orders in Greece and Romania, and most online shops offer it in Bulgaria, Slovakia, Serbia, Lithuania and Poland. Across Western and Northern Europe, fewer than one shop in ten offers it, and in Italy it is down to about 1% of online payments. If you sell cross-border into the countries where COD is strong, offering it is the easy part. The hard part is everything after the order: confirming it, shipping it and collecting the cash.
This guide covers where COD matters and how to run it. For the numbers themselves — share of shops, share of orders and the buyout rates COD providers publish, with every source and date — see COD delivery and acceptance rates by country in Europe.
Where cash on delivery still matters
Group the countries by how central COD is, not by geography. The figures in this table are the headline ones; the data page has the rest.
| Group | Countries | What the data says | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|---|
| COD core | Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia | About half of orders or deliveries paid by COD in Greece and Romania; more than 80% of shops offer it in Greece, Bulgaria and Slovakia | Offer COD by default and build your operation around it |
| Strong but shifting | Serbia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary | Between 61% and 69% of shops offer COD in Serbia, Lithuania and Poland; Hungarian shoppers are moving to card on delivery and prepayment | Offer COD next to the local prepaid methods, and expect card payment at the door |
| Niche | Italy, Western and Northern Europe | 1.2% of online payments in Italy; fewer than 10% of shops offer COD in Western and Northern Europe | A fallback for hesitant buyers, not the core of the business |
Scroll the table sideways to see every column →
Spain, Portugal, Germany and Austria sit in between in a way the public data does not settle. At least one COD provider still publishes buyout rates for them, so a niche exists, but I found no recent public figure for how large it is.
Greece
Greece has the highest share of shops offering COD in ECDB’s 2025 study (85.6%). AfterSalesPro’s review of more than 3 million orders shows COD falling from 60% of orders in 2023 to 50% in 2025, while card payments rose from 30% to 35%. One thing to watch: a draft bill under public consultation in October 2026 would require COD to be paid electronically at the door, with fines for couriers that take cash. According to To Vima, the ministry is reconsidering it and may drop it. If it passes, customers would still pay on delivery, just not in cash. Plan for slower delivery to the islands too: 114 hours on average in 2025, against 65 hours on the mainland.
Romania
Romania is still a COD-first market: 50.2% of e-commerce deliveries were paid by COD in Q1 2024, down from 52.5% a year earlier (Innoship). The decline is real but slow: for a cross-border seller, half of the market still expects to pay at the door.
Bulgaria and Slovakia
About 80% of online shops offer COD in both countries (80.3% and 80.1%, ECDB 2025). I found no recent public figure for the share of orders. One COD provider, BigArena, publishes some of its highest delivery rates for Bulgaria; treat those as its own figures, listed on the data page.
Poland
60.7% of Polish shops offer COD (ECDB 2025), but it is no longer the default. In the Gemius 2025 survey, 72% of respondents used BLIK and 64% used fast bank transfers. COD in Poland works as a trust option for first-time buyers, so offer it, but don’t build the checkout around it.
Hungary
PwC’s September 2026 report says COD is still common, but card payment on delivery is now more popular than cash on delivery (35% vs 30%), and 56% of online shoppers prepay when they can. Parcel lockers have also become the most popular way to receive a parcel. If you sell COD in Hungary, make sure your carrier’s couriers take cards.
Italy and Western Europe
In Italy, COD was 1.2% of online payments in 2025 and falling (NetRetail 2025). ECDB puts the share of shops offering COD below 10% in Western and Northern markets. Here COD is a conversion tool for a minority of buyers, not a market in itself.
Running COD cross-border: confirm, ship, collect
In cash on delivery the order is not the sale; the delivered, collected parcel is. Every refused parcel costs you shipping out, often shipping back, handling, and the ad spend that brought the order in. Running COD across borders comes down to three steps.
1. Confirm every order before it ships
Contact the customer in their own language before the parcel leaves: confirm the product, the quantity, the price, the phone number and the address. Catch duplicates and test orders. Hold doubtful orders instead of shipping them and hoping.
- What it changes: in the operations I work on (about 100,000 orders over 12 months, 10 countries), automated order confirmation moved parcel acceptance from 65–70% to 75–80%.
- What providers say: BigArena reports that confirmation calls before dispatch add 4–7 points of delivery success on supplement campaigns, and WAPI says call-centre recovery moves the buyout rate by 10–15%.
Confirmation is repetitive, time-sensitive work, which is why I automate it for clients: messages go out within minutes of the order, answers update the order, and only the unclear cases reach a person. See back-office automation.
2. Ship fast, with a carrier that collects COD locally
- Pick a carrier or fulfilment partner that collects COD in the destination country and get its remittance schedule and COD fees in writing before the first parcel.
- Deliver as fast as the country allows. AfterSalesPro’s Greek review links shipping speed and the last mile to return rates. A buyer who waits a week has time to change their mind.
- Offer pickup points and lockers where people use them. In Greece, 24.6% of shoppers choose a locker when it is offered, and AfterSalesPro says lockers reduce failed deliveries. In Hungary they are now the most popular delivery option (PwC 2026).
- Send shipping and delivery-day messages in the local language, so the customer expects the courier and has the payment ready.
- Act on delivery problems the same day. Carriers report failed first attempts, unreachable customers, address mismatches and refusals at the door. Calling the customer while the parcel is still with the courier is the cheapest moment to save it.
3. Collect: reconcile the cash against the parcels
With COD, the money reaches you later, from the carrier, minus its fees. That gap is where margin quietly disappears.
- Match every remittance to delivered parcels, line by line, and chase every delivered parcel that was not paid out.
- Check the carrier’s invoice against what you actually shipped, returned and collected.
- Track returns back into stock so refused parcels are not written off by accident.
- Measure margin on delivered and collected orders, not on orders placed. The COD profit calculator shows what your acceptance rate does to your real margin.
- Break acceptance down by country, carrier and product. An average hides the one country or product that loses money.
If you already sell COD and the numbers don’t add up, an operations audit shows where parcels are refused and where cash goes missing between revenue and settlement.
Before you launch COD in a new country
- Check how common COD is there on the data page.
- Find a carrier that collects COD in that country; get remittance timing and fees in writing.
- Set up order confirmation in the local language before the first order ships.
- Translate the shipping and delivery-day messages.
- Decide what happens to refused parcels: back to stock, reshipped, or written off.
- Work out the acceptance rate you need to break even with the COD profit calculator.
- Track acceptance by country, carrier and product from the first week.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which European countries use cash on delivery the most?
Greece, Bulgaria and Slovakia have the highest share of online shops offering cash on delivery (85.6%, 80.3% and 80.1%, ECDB 2025). In Greece and Romania, about half of online orders or deliveries are still paid by cash on delivery. In Western and Northern Europe, fewer than 10% of shops offer it.
Is cash on delivery declining in Europe?
Slowly, even where it is strongest. In Greece its share of online orders fell from 60% in 2023 to 50% in 2025. In Romania it fell from 52.5% to 50.2% of deliveries between Q1 2023 and Q1 2024. In Hungary, card payment on delivery is now more popular than cash. In Italy, cash on delivery is down to 1.2% of online payments.
What acceptance rate should I expect on COD orders in Europe?
One COD provider, WAPI, publishes a typical buyout of 75–85% in its strongest markets. In the operations I work on, parcel acceptance was 65–70% before automated order confirmation and 75–80% after it, over about 100,000 orders in 10 countries. The country-by-country figures are on the data page.
How do I reduce COD refusals?
Confirm every order before it ships, check the phone number and address, deliver as fast as the country allows, and follow up quickly when the carrier reports a failed attempt, an unreachable customer or an address mismatch. Then measure acceptance by country, carrier and product to see where parcels still come back.
Sources
Every figure in this guide was checked against its source on 27–28 October 2026. Provider figures (WAPI, BigArena) describe each provider’s own parcels.
- ECDB, share of online stores offering cash on delivery in Europe, 3 June 2025. ecdb.com
- Innoship, E-Commerce Index Q1 2024 (Romania), 22 April 2024. innoship.com
- AfterSalesPro, Greek e-commerce review 2025 (PDF). aftersalespro.gr
- To Vima, on the draft rule on electronic COD payments in Greece, 23 October 2026. tovima.com
- PwC Hungary, Digitális Kereskedelmi Körkép 2026/I, 24 September 2026. pwc.com
- PagamentiDigitali.it, payment data from NetRetail 2025, 17 April 2025. pagamentidigitali.it
- Przelewy24, on Gemius “E-commerce in Poland 2025”, 26 September 2025. przelewy24.pl
- WAPI, cash-on-delivery page (provider figures), undated, read 28 October 2026. wapi.com
- BigArena, cash on delivery in Europe guide (provider figures), 14 June 2026. bigarena.net
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