Why 3D Toys only takes card payments

Personalised toys can’t be resold, so cash on delivery was too risky. Card payments through Netopia, plus the SEO basics.

What I built

Card payments with Netopia. The shop creates the order, the customer pays on Netopia’s page, and a webhook confirms the payment and updates the order. The webhook is idempotent, so a repeated notification can’t confirm the same order twice.

Same day, the SEO basics: a sitemap built from the active products, robots rules, and structured data for products and for the shop itself.

What I learned

The plan was to offer cash on delivery for the first version, because people trust it. Then I looked at the legal side. Romanian law (OUG 34/2014) gives customers 14 days to return most online orders, but personalised products are an exception. Cash on delivery creates a different problem: if someone refuses a toy with their kid’s name on it at the door, I can’t sell it to anyone else.

Paying upfront removes that risk. The cost is losing some customers who only pay cash.

What’s next

Test the full flow in Netopia’s sandbox before going live, then watch whether card-only hurts conversion. If it does, the fallback is a deposit plus cash on delivery.

next-step.md

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