Cash on delivery, bank transfer, or card: which one is right for your business
Cash on delivery works for what you deliver yourself in your own city and can resell if it falls through. Bank transfer works for high amounts with customers you already know. Card works for new orders you need to secure before you start working on them.
Mayra runs a flower shop in Los Mochis and delivers to customers’ homes. On May 10th she had forty orders out. Thirty-nine went fine. Order number forty was a $900 arrangement with a dedication card, flowers bought that same morning, and when the delivery guy knocked, no one was home. “Oh, I’m not there right now, I’ll get it tomorrow.” By the next day, the arrangement wasn’t good for anyone.
What Mayra lost that day wasn’t a commission. It was the flowers, the delivery guy’s time, and the gas for two trips. And all of it happened because the order was set up as cash on delivery.
It’s not that cash on delivery is a bad option. It’s that Mayra was using it for the wrong kind of order.
What is cash on delivery, and who is it for?
Cash on delivery is when your customer pays once they receive the product, in cash or by card reader, right at their door. It works for businesses that deliver themselves, within their own city, selling things that can be resold if the order falls through.
That last part is the one almost nobody thinks about. If you sell clothing and the customer doesn’t answer the door, the blouse goes back on the rack and tomorrow it belongs to someone else. If you sell a flower arrangement with a lady’s name written on the ribbon, it doesn’t go back anywhere.
That’s why the question that decides everything isn’t “which payment method is best?” It’s: if this order doesn’t go through, who ends up eating the loss?
Which one is right for you: cash on delivery, bank transfer, or card?
Cash on delivery for generic products you deliver yourself, bank transfer for high amounts with customers you already know, card for custom work that forces you to spend money upfront. Three things decide it: whether you deliver yourself or ship through a courier, whether the customer has bought from you before, and whether the product is generic or made specifically for that person.
Cash on delivery — when you deliver within your own city and the product is generic. Food orders, clothing, groceries, stationery. It lowers the barrier for new customers who don’t trust you yet, and that’s its real value: it wins over people who don’t know you.
Bank transfer — when the amount is high and the customer has already bought from you. Nothing gets deducted, and the full amount lands in your account. Its cost shows up somewhere else: someone has to check the bank and confirm each payment by hand. With five a day, that’s manageable; with fifty a day, that’s a full-time job.
Card — when the order is new, custom-made, or requires you to spend money before delivering. Here you do get a percentage deducted per sale, but you’re paying that fee in exchange for something concrete: the money is already there before you buy the materials.
Mayra ended up with a one-line rule: cash on delivery for the ready-made bouquets, card or a deposit for anything with a dedication.
What does each payment method really cost you?
The card fee is visible because it shows up on your statement. The cost of cash on delivery doesn’t show up anywhere, and it’s almost always bigger.
Do this math with your own numbers: if 1 out of every 10 cash-on-delivery shipments falls through, that lost order just ate up 10% of those ten sales — and that’s several times more than any card fee. Don’t guess it: count how many fell through last month. If it’s zero, cash on delivery is basically free for you, so don’t touch it. If it’s three out of twenty, now you know which orders you need to charge for upfront.
Bank transfer looks like the cheapest of the three, and sometimes it is. But if you’re confirming payments at eleven at night, digging through WhatsApp for a receipt, that time is a cost too — you’re just the one paying it, and it never shows up anywhere.
Can I offer all three payment methods on the same page?
Yes, and that’s the normal setup. On your Proyecta page you can have card payment and offline payment at the same time, and the customer chooses at checkout.
Offline payment covers bank transfer, OXXO deposit, and cash on delivery: you post the instructions and the customer tracks their order from there. And here’s the important part: an offline order is a real order. It lands in your dashboard marked as pending payment, with the name, address, and everything they ordered, and you mark it as paid once the money comes in. It’s not a stray email that gets lost in the shuffle.
If you’d rather close the sale over WhatsApp, you can do that too: the order gets built on the page and you receive the message with everything already written out, instead of the customer dictating it to you piece by piece.
What if your customer doesn’t want to pay before receiving?
Offer both and let them choose. Most new customers start out paying cash on delivery, and after their second or third purchase, they pay in advance without you even asking, because by then they know you actually deliver.
Where you shouldn’t budge is on custom work. There, you’re not asking for trust — you’re asking someone to cover the materials you’re about to buy today. A 50% deposit solves that, and it’s a one-line ask: “I need half now to buy the materials, and the other half when you receive it.” Nobody argues with that line, because it’s true.
Describe it and publish it
If you already know which orders you’re going to charge for upfront and which ones can go cash on delivery, all that’s left is having your page say so. Describe it exactly like that in Proyecta: “a page for my flower shop with a catalog of arrangements, home delivery, card payment for custom orders, and cash on delivery for the ready-made ones.” Your site comes out published, with its own link, and both payment methods working.
Before you decide, count the ones that fell through
Pull up last month’s orders and split them into two piles: the ones you can resell and the ones you can’t. That “can’t” pile is exactly what you need to charge for upfront. Everything else can stay cash on delivery, and it’s probably bringing you new customers.
You can get started at proyecta.dev.