Cash on Delivery in Saudi Arabia: Fees, Limits, Refusals

How cash on delivery works in Saudi Arabia

With cash on delivery (COD) you place the order online without paying, and the courier collects the money when the parcel reaches you. The store usually adds a COD fee to the order at checkout. Nice One describes its SAR 28 charge plainly as a fee for deferring payment until you receive the order, and says paying in advance by Visa, mada or Apple Pay removes it.

"Cash" is no longer always cash. Saudi Post (SPL) tells online merchants it offers COD through point-of-sale devices with its service providers, either as cash or as a payment link, and Trendyol says its COD option can be paid in cash or by card at the door. So a COD order is really a "pay at the door" order; ask the store or the courier which methods the driver will accept if you plan to pay by card.

COD is shrinking in the background. The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) reports that electronic payments made up 85% of retail payments in 2025, up from 79% in 2024. Stores respond by pricing COD separately, capping it, or switching it off, which is why the fee and the rules differ so much from one store to the next.

What COD costs at Saudi stores

Our table below lists 31 stores. Of the 15 that offer COD today and publish a fee in riyals, the cheapest is Carrefour KSA at SAR 5 and the most expensive is Golden Scent at SAR 40; the median is SAR 20. In between: Max Fashion SAR 9, Styli SAR 12 (the same as its shipping fee), Faces and Al Majed Oud SAR 15, noon and Home Centre SAR 18, Bath & Body Works SAR 20, Trendyol SAR 22.5, Nice One and Alsaif Gallery SAR 28, 6thStreet (now AIVI) and Crocs SAR 30, and Namshi SAR 34.

The fee is often only part of the cost. Golden Scent gives free delivery from SAR 369, counted after the code discount, but only on prepaid orders: its delivery page says COD orders are not included. A SAR 400 order paid by card ships free; the same order paid on delivery adds SAR 40, and the free-delivery rule no longer covers it. The page does not state the delivery charge for a COD order above SAR 369 in so many words, so check the checkout total.

At Max Fashion the two charges stack in a simpler way: below SAR 149 delivery costs SAR 18, and COD adds SAR 9, so a SAR 120 basket paid on delivery costs SAR 147, while the same basket prepaid costs SAR 138. A voucher code that brings your basket under a free-delivery minimum can therefore make COD more expensive, not less.

Some fees cannot be pinned down. Mumzworld shows SAR 10 on one page and SAR 30 on another, SHEIN states its COD fee as USD 6 rather than in riyals, and Centrepoint's current delivery article no longer mentions the SAR 17 charge an older article gave. We mark these "not confirmed" until the store's own pages agree.

When a store refuses cash on delivery

If COD is missing at checkout, one of these published rules is usually the reason:

Order value. noon caps COD at SAR 6,500 per order, Ounass at SAR 7,500 and Bath & Body Works at SAR 4,000. Mumzworld only takes COD from SAR 100 and below SAR 10,000. Trendyol limits it to orders of SAR 100 to SAR 1,875 that qualify for free shipping, and Amazon.sa says it is unavailable when your open orders exceed SAR 1,000.

Delivery type. noon excludes lockers, gift addresses and some doorstep drops; Namshi excludes "Leave at my door" and locker delivery; Sephora does not offer COD to pickup points.

Product type. Amazon.sa excludes Global Store items and some sellers' items, Jarir does not allow COD on orders containing only digital products, and Ounass does not take COD for pre-orders.

Area. Mumzworld lists Madinah, Jazan, Najran and Al Baha among the areas without COD. Alsaif Gallery does not ship COD orders outside Riyadh until you confirm them on WhatsApp.

Switched off. Amazon.sa's help page says COD is temporarily unavailable (SAR 17 when active), and Jarir lists it as "not available at this time" (SAR 17.25 including VAT when active). Some stores, such as Metro Brazil and Airalo, do not offer it at all, and Al-Dawaa's 60-minute service is prepaid only.

Payment extras. noon's 0% bank instalments are not available with COD, and Golden Scent's free delivery excludes COD orders.

What the law says about the fee

No Saudi rule we found caps or bans a COD fee. What the rules do require is that you see it. Article 7 of the E-Commerce Law (Royal Decree M/126, 2019) obliges the store to give you, before the contract, the total price including all charges, taxes and delivery fees, and its payment and delivery arrangements. Article 8 requires an itemised invoice with that total and the delivery date and place.

The Ministry of Commerce's self-assessment checklist for e-stores is more specific: item 12 asks the store to show additional charges on the invoice and names cash on delivery as an example, next to installation and packaging. If a COD fee appears for the first time at your door, it was not disclosed as these texts require.

Couriers have their own rules. The Communications, Space and Technology Commission (CST) document on postal customers' rights gives you the right to the service at the advertised price and the right to inspect the parcel before you receive it. In 2019 the Commission fined a parcel company SAR 100,000 for charging customers fees it had not disclosed and then demanding payment.

Returns and refunds on COD orders

You keep the same 7-day right to rescind an unused product under Article 13 of the E-Commerce Law, with its listed exceptions, and Article 13 says the consumer bears the cost of rescinding unless agreed otherwise. The Law does not say whether the COD fee must come back, and several stores say it will not: Alsaif Gallery, Trendyol, Bath & Body Works and Amazon.sa all call their COD fee non-refundable. Treat the fee as spent once the parcel is delivered.

The refund route also changes. With no card to refund to, stores pay COD refunds as store credit (Ounass, VogaCloset, Crocs, Level Shoes as an e-gift card, Trendyol as Trendyol Coins) or by bank transfer (Home Centre within up to 14 business days, Arabian Oud in 7 to 14 business days). Store credit can only be spent at that store, so a shopper who might return an item loses flexibility by paying cash.

If the delivery is more than 15 days late, Article 14 lets you rescind and claim a refund of amounts paid and costs caused by the delay, unless the delay is force majeure. With COD you have usually paid nothing yet, which makes cancelling simpler.

When COD is worth paying for

COD makes sense when you cannot or do not want to pay online: no card, a first order from a store you do not know, or a high-value item you want to see first. Even then, check the store before ordering. The Ministry of Commerce acts on complaints about e-stores verified on the Saudi Business Center platform, and it urges shoppers not to transfer money to personal bank accounts. A courier asking you to pay into an individual's account instead of in cash, by card or by an official payment link is a reason to stop.

If you already have mada or Apple Pay, prepaying is usually cheaper: on a SAR 200 order the median SAR 20 fee is 10% of the basket, more than many voucher codes save.

Questions shoppers ask