Selling in Morocco with cash on delivery: the guide for foreign brands

In Europe, the customer pays before the parcel ships. In Morocco, it's often the other way around: the order is only a promise, and the sale closes at the door, cash in hand. For a foreign brand, this isn't a technical detail. It changes the sales page, logistics, cash flow and the way you read your campaigns. This guide complements our article on e-commerce marketing in Morocco with the hands-on method for selling with cash on delivery without losing your margin to refused parcels.

Why does cash on delivery dominate in Morocco?

Because it's the payment method shoppers choose. The ANRT's survey on the use of information technologies, published in 2025, shows that in 2024 84.1% of online shoppers paid cash on delivery. Bank cards are gaining ground, but are still far behind.

Multiple answers were possible: the same shopper may pay by card one time and in cash another. The market itself is growing fast. In 2024, 24.9% of Moroccans aged 5 and over bought online, compared with 15.1% in 2019. And 89.8% of online shoppers have their orders delivered straight to their home.

For a foreign brand, the conclusion is simple: COD isn't a fallback option, it's your main checkout. Offer it by default, and keep card payment as an option for those who prefer it.

Why confirm every order before shipping?

Because with COD, you pay for delivery before you get paid. A refused order costs you the outbound trip, often the return, and ties up stock. The confirmation call is the cheapest filter in the entire chain.

The journey of a COD order

1. The customer sees an ad and fills in a short form: name, phone, city, address.
2. Your team calls them or messages them on WhatsApp to confirm.
3. The confirmed order goes to the carrier.
4. The courier hands over the parcel and collects the payment.
5. The carrier pays the funds out to you, minus its fees.

What the confirmation must check

• The order is real — a purchase made by mistake, out of curiosity or with a fake number stops here.
• The address is complete — neighborhood, landmark, a time slot when the customer will be there.
• The total price is clear — product plus delivery, stated in dirhams. No surprises at the door.
• An add-on offer — this is the right moment to suggest a second item or a bundle.

Call fast, ideally within the hour: the urge to buy fades. Speak the customer's language, Darija or French. If they don't pick up, a clear WhatsApp message takes over. Our guide to WhatsApp Business for selling in Morocco details the messages that work.

How do you reduce refused parcels?

Start by measuring. To our knowledge, there is no reliable public statistic on the refusal rate in Morocco: the figures going around come from sellers or software vendors, rarely from a published methodology. The only figure that counts is yours: refused parcels divided by parcels shipped, by product, by city and by campaign.

Then tackle refusals cause by cause:

The sales page plays a direct role. If it promises two days and the parcel arrives after eight, the customer has had time to change their mind, or to buy elsewhere. Promise the delivery time you can really keep.

What logistics do you need for cash on delivery?

Most online sellers use a carrier that specializes in COD: it delivers, collects the cash and pays out the funds. Some providers also store the goods and prepare the parcels. Before you sign, ask these questions:

• Coverage — which cities, and what are the real delivery times outside the major urban areas?
• Rates — the price per delivered parcel, and above all per returned parcel.
• Payout — within how many days does the cash collected reach your account?
• Tracking — real-time status for every parcel, ideally connected to your store.
• Returns — how long returns take to get back into stock, and the condition of returned products.

Test two carriers side by side for a few weeks and compare their delivery rates. Think about cash flow too: between shipping and payout, your money sits with the carrier. Finally, as a foreign brand, settle the question of local stock before buying traffic: an ad that works with no stock in Morocco means orders you won't be able to deliver on time.

How do you set up your landing page and ads for COD?

A COD store often sells one product at a time. The page receiving the traffic must therefore say everything on a single screen:

• The price in dirhams, delivery included, and the words “cash on delivery” visible right away.
• Real photos and a real video, three benefits, the delivery time.
• A four-field form and a WhatsApp button.
• A thank-you page that tells the customer to expect the confirmation call.

Our method to build a landing page that converts details each block.

On the advertising side, Meta and TikTok are the two natural COD channels: a product video shows what the customer will receive. The key setting comes down to one idea: teaching the algorithm what a real customer is. At launch, optimize for the order submitted, the only signal available in volume. Then send confirmed and delivered orders back to Meta via the Conversions API, and to TikTok via its Events API. The algorithm then looks for people who resemble those who pay, not those who click.

Plan for an ad budget of at least $299 / €299 per month to test a product properly. At ANIMA, this budget is paid directly to Meta or TikTok, with no commission.

Why track confirmed orders rather than orders received?

Because an order received earns nothing until it's paid. An honest COD dashboard tracks four numbers:

Let's take some illustrative numbers: 100 orders received, 70 confirmed, 60 delivered. Your ad spend gets divided by 60, not by 100. A campaign that looked profitable on orders received can lose money on orders delivered.

Run this calculation per campaign and per creative. That's often where you discover that a very “high-performing” ad mostly draws in the curious. Cut it, and give its budget to the one that delivers.

Sources

• ANRT — Survey on ICT access and use by individuals and households 2024–2025, online purchases, payment and delivery methods (pages 39 to 41).
• Meta for Developers — Conversions API, sending offline and CRM events.
• TikTok For Business — About Events API, sharing web, app and offline conversions.