Checkout · 9 min
What cash on delivery still teaches about mobile checkout
Calling COD “legacy” is a Bangkok luxury. In several provinces it is still the moment a shopper tells the truth about wanting the parcel.
Paid-in-app looks clean on a dashboard. Cash on delivery looks messy: accepted, refused, partially paid at the door, address wrong, shopper not home. That mess is information. Module 05 of Live Basket Intelligence spends a full evening on it because fashion desks keep celebrating a live-sale GMV that the warehouse will unwind the next afternoon.
COD conversion is not “order placed.” It is “parcel accepted and money taken,” sometimes two days later. If your checkout analytics stops at thank-you screen, you are measuring optimism.
What the form itself teaches
Thai address fields, province lists, and 7-Eleven pick-up options are not UX trivia. They are where intent becomes logistics. We have watched add-to-cart look healthy while checkout dies on a province dropdown that lists English names a rider would never use. The shopper is not confused. The form is impolite.
Line payments and cards deserve their own funnels. Mixing them with COD into one “conversion rate” is how national reports become fiction. Split first. Then argue.
A reservation
COD is declining in some Bangkok segments. If your catalogue is already 90% prepaid, this note will feel like yesterday’s war. Still, refusal patterns after a verbal live-sale promise remain current. The method is the split, not nostalgia for cash.