Insights
Cash-on-delivery in 2025: how African logistics operators are handling the last mile
Cash-on-delivery remains operationally significant across many African markets, but the businesses improving margins are the ones digitising collection, reconciliation, and exception handling instead of treating COD as an offline side process.
Why COD still matters
In many markets, COD is still a trust mechanism as much as a payment method. Customers want to inspect or receive goods before committing cash or payment confirmation.
That means operators need systems that treat payment collection as part of last-mile execution, not as a separate back-office workflow.
- Delivery confirmation and payment collection need to stay linked
- Failed collection must trigger clear follow-up paths
- Finance teams need same-day visibility into collected versus outstanding amounts
Where operators lose money
Manual COD processes create three common leaks: delayed reconciliation, weak audit trails, and slow exception recovery when the driver cannot collect on delivery.
Each of those leaks compounds as volume grows, especially when multiple depots or partner fleets are involved.
How digitised workflows help
Digitised COD workflows give operators a timestamped record of collection status, delivery outcome, and follow-up actions from the same shipment record.
That shortens the gap between what happened on the road and what finance teams can verify centrally, which is where healthier cash flow starts.