Buy Online, Pick Up In Store (BOPIS)

What BOPIS is

Buy Online, Pick Up In Store (BOPIS) is an order-fulfillment method: your customer pays or places an order through your online store, then collects the items at a physical location. It is also called BOPUS. The order starts online, so the payment is an e-commerce transaction even though the customer receives the goods in person.

Your store fulfills the order by locating the items, setting them aside, and notifying the customer when they are ready. A pickup area and a process to verify the person collecting the order help staff hand over the right purchase. BOPIS is common in retail, but the same model can apply wherever you sell online and offer local collection.

BOPIS is not a special payment fee, but a broken inventory handoff can still cost you the sale.

How BOPIS works

Your e-commerce system needs to show stock at each pickup location, send each order to a store that can fulfill it, and update inventory as items are reserved or sold. Staff then pick and pack the order. The customer collects it after receiving a ready-for-pickup notice.

A single cart can include items for pickup and items for delivery, but the system must keep their fulfillment statuses clear. If one item is ready and another is not, customers need to see which items they can collect and when the rest will arrive.

What BOPIS means for your costs

BOPIS does not have a standard card fee of its own. Your online checkout is a card-not-present transaction, so its processing cost follows your e-commerce payment setup, not the fact that the customer later walks into your store. Compare online and in-store sales on your statement to see the actual difference in processing costs.

The larger expense is usually the work behind fulfillment: connecting inventory, order, and payment systems, plus staff time to pick, stage, and hand over orders. For an order split between pickup and later shipment, align payment authorization and capture with the fulfillment stages. A mismatch can leave your payment record out of step with what you have actually handed over.

Where BOPIS goes wrong

Stale stock counts can let customers buy items your store cannot find. A stock figure that is 24 hours old, for example, can miss an item sold in person that morning. The result is a cancelled order, a refund, and extra work for your team.

Pickup also creates a handoff risk. Staff need an order lookup process and a way to confirm the order belongs to the person collecting it. Without those checks, the wrong order can leave the store or a valid customer can be turned away.

What you can actually change

1. 01
   Sync stock frequently. Update inventory when online orders are placed and when in-store sales occur. Use a pickup buffer if your stock counts cannot reflect sales in real time.
2. 02
   Separate fulfillment stages. For orders with both pickup and delivery items, confirm that your checkout and payment flow records what is ready, what has shipped, and what remains outstanding.
3. 03
   Compare payment costs. Review online and in-store transactions separately on your merchant statement. Compare the rates and per-transaction charges rather than assuming pickup changes the fee.
4. 04
   Set pickup checks. Give staff a consistent way to find orders, confirm the collector, and record handoff. This reduces wrong-order pickups and avoidable refunds.

Frequently asked questions