A shop in Chabahil sent out eleven parcels in a week and got four back. Nobody was home for two, one had changed their mind, and one had never really meant to order at all. The goods came back fine. The delivery fees did not.
That is cash on delivery working exactly as designed, and it is why shopkeepers who have been burned twice start refusing it. Refusing it is usually the more expensive mistake, because in Nepal a large share of customers will simply not prepay a shop they have not bought from before, and telling them no loses the sale rather than the risk.
The useful question is not whether to take COD. It is how to take it without funding other people's indecision.
Why it is rational, not backward
It is tempting to read COD as a trust problem that will fade as wallets spread. It is better read as a rational response to a real risk.
A customer who prepays a shop they found on Instagram is trusting a stranger with money and has no counter to walk back into. Cash on delivery moves that risk onto the shop, which is uncomfortable but honest: the shop is the one who can prove it exists, and asking the buyer to go first is asking the weaker party to take the risk.
Shops that internalise that stop being annoyed by COD and start managing it.
The three losses, and they are different
The refusal. Goods go out, nobody accepts them, goods come back. You have paid two delivery legs and the item has been handled twice. This is the common one.
The unreachable. The parcel goes out to a phone number that does not answer, sits at a depot, and comes back. This is usually a data problem rather than a customer problem.
The float. The parcel is delivered, the money is collected by the courier, and it reaches you days or weeks later. Nothing has gone wrong and you are still short of working capital. This one is invisible on a spreadsheet and the one that strangles a growing shop.
Each has a different fix. Treating them as one problem called "COD is risky" is why shops end up banning it entirely.
What actually cuts the refusals
Confirm before you dispatch, on the channel they used. A message that says what is coming, when, and what it will cost at the door. Not to be polite: to give the person who has changed their mind a chance to say so while the parcel is still on your shelf. A cancellation before dispatch costs you nothing.
Make the total unmissable on the order. Most refusals at the door are about the amount, not the item, and the amount is usually a surprise because a delivery fee appeared after the basket. If the number at the door is the number they saw, most of this vanishes.
Check the phone number is real. The unreachable parcel is nearly always a mistyped digit that nobody looked at. Ten seconds at dispatch is cheaper than two delivery legs.
Keep a quiet list. Not a public blacklist, just your own memory. A customer who has refused twice can be asked to prepay the third time, politely, and most of them will.
What to do about the float
Ask your courier when COD money settles, in days, and then plan as if it is longer. If you are ordering stock against money that is technically yours but is sitting in somebody else's account, you are lending them working capital at your own risk.
For larger orders it is worth asking for part of it up front. Not the whole thing, which reads as distrust, but a deposit that covers your cost if the parcel comes back. Most customers ordering something expensive understand this immediately.
What not to do
Do not add a COD surcharge quietly. If you charge more for cash on delivery, say so on the page next to the option, in the same size type as everything else. A fee discovered at the door is the fastest way to turn a delivery into a refusal and a review.
And do not make prepaid the only option because you had a bad week. The shops that do this usually reverse it within a month, having watched their orders halve.
Where Pasal helps and where it does not
Pasal does not collect the money and does not carry the parcel. What it does is remove the two clerical causes of a refused delivery.
The order carries the customer's name, phone and address as they typed them, so there is nothing to re-key and no transposed digit at dispatch. The total on the order is the total they agreed, delivery fee included, so the number at the door matches the number on the screen. And you mark the order paid yourself, when the money is actually in your hand or your account, rather than the system assuming it.
The judgement about who to trust stays yours. It should.
The short version
Take cash on delivery. Confirm before dispatch, show the full total before checkout, check the phone number, remember who refuses, and know when your courier settles.
If you are choosing a courier in the first place, that is here. If you are trying to move more customers to prepaid over time, the wallet comparison is here.
Marking an order paid once the money is actually in your hand is covered in order statuses.