BOX NOW Bulgaria: parcel lockers for your online store

In short: BOX NOW is a parcel locker network in Bulgaria that delivers only to self-service lockers, never to a home address. The shopper picks a locker at checkout, gets a 6-digit PIN by SMS when the parcel arrives and has 48 hours to collect it, plus 48 more on request. Lockers take no cash, so cash on delivery is paid by card through a link.

This guide is for store owners who sell to customers in Bulgaria, including foreign founders and EU sellers shipping from a Bulgarian warehouse, and who want to add lockers to their checkout. It explains how BOX NOW works for your shopper, what fits in a locker, how cash on delivery works when the locker takes no cash, how returns go back, and how to connect BOX NOW to a store on CloudCart, the Bulgarian ecommerce platform. Figures about BOX NOW come from BOX NOW's own pages, linked in the text. Prices for your parcels are set in your BOX NOW contract, so ask BOX NOW for its service price list before you set your checkout rates.

What is BOX NOW and how is it different from Econt and Speedy?

BOX NOW is a locker-only delivery network: every parcel goes to a self-service locker at a petrol station, a shop or a residential area, open around the clock. Econt and Speedy (part of DPD) deliver to an address, a courier office or a locker; BOX NOW has no home delivery and no offices.

BOX NOW says more than 2,500 online stores deliver with it in Bulgaria, that its lockers run on solar power and that they are placed at key points in the city (BOX NOW Bulgaria). The company also operates in Greece, Cyprus, Croatia and Romania, which matters if you sell cross-border: which countries you can ship to is decided by your BOX NOW contract.

	BOX NOW	Econt	Speedy (DPD Bulgaria)
Delivery channels	Locker only	Address, Econt office, Econtomat locker	Address, Speedy office, Speedy locker
How the shopper opens the locker	6-digit PIN sent by SMS	Code from Econt	Code from Speedy
Cash at pickup	No, card or payment link only	Yes at an office or the door; card at an Econtomat	Yes at an office or the door
Largest parcel	20 kg, 36 × 45 × 60 cm	Locker 20 kg; office far larger	Locker limits; office far larger
Rate at checkout in CloudCart	Your own rate table	Live courier rate or your table	Live courier rate or your table

In practice, most stores selling in Bulgaria do not choose one or the other. They offer Econt and Speedy for addresses and offices and add BOX NOW for shoppers who prefer a locker near home or on the way to work. The wider picture of who delivers where is in couriers in Bulgaria.

How do BOX NOW lockers work for the shopper?

For the shopper, a BOX NOW delivery is four steps: choose a locker at checkout, wait for the SMS, type the PIN on the locker keypad and take the parcel. The details, from BOX NOW's FAQ:

1. The shopper picks a locker from the list or map in your checkout. The chosen locker is saved on the order, so you do not ask for it again.
2. You hand over the parcel. BOX NOW collects parcels from your warehouse and takes them to its sorting centre. BOX NOW says delivery happens within 24 hours after the store finishes processing the order.
3. The shopper gets an SMS with a 6-digit PIN once the parcel is in the locker, plus reminders by SMS while it waits.
4. The parcel waits 48 hours. The shopper can extend this by 48 hours at no charge in the "Track your parcel" section of BOX NOW's website, or redirect the parcel to another locker in the BOX NOW app.
5. The shopper types the PIN on the locker keypad, the compartment opens and the parcel is collected, at any hour of the day.

Important: a parcel that is not collected in time goes back. BOX NOW says uncollected parcels are returned to the sender, so tell your shoppers about the 48-hour window in the order confirmation email, the same place they see the tracking number.

Two things make lockers popular with Bulgarian shoppers: they do not have to wait at home for a courier, and they can collect at night or at the weekend. For you, the SMS reminders and the 48-hour extension give the shopper several chances to collect before the parcel comes back.

What fits in a BOX NOW locker?

A BOX NOW locker takes parcels up to 20 kg in three compartment sizes, all 45 cm wide and 60 cm long. Only the height changes:

Compartment	Height	Width	Length
Small	8 cm	45 cm	60 cm
Medium	17 cm	45 cm	60 cm
Large	36 cm	45 cm	60 cm

BOX NOW does not carry fresh groceries or dangerous chemicals, according to its FAQ. Clothing, cosmetics, books, phone accessories, supplements and most small homeware fit easily; a flat parcel such as a T-shirt in a mailer goes in the small compartment.

In CloudCart the locker check runs at checkout. The platform reads the weight and dimensions of the products in the cart and offers BOX NOW only when the cart fits one compartment. A cart that is too big simply does not see the locker option, so for bulky goods keep Econt or Speedy address delivery turned on as well. Two settings help this work:

• Product weight and dimensions. Fill them in on the product. A product without a weight uses the default weight from the BOX NOW settings, which is 100 g unless you change it.
• Package type. When you create the shipping label, you pick Small, Medium or Large to match the box you packed.

How does cash on delivery work with BOX NOW?

BOX NOW supports cash on delivery, but the shopper never pays in cash: BOX NOW sends a payment link by email, SMS or Viber, and the shopper pays by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay before opening the locker. Cash on delivery (COD, "nalozhen platezh" in Bulgarian) is still one of the most common ways Bulgarians pay online, so this matters for your checkout.

1. The shopper chooses cash on delivery and a BOX NOW locker at checkout.
2. You create the shipping label with the COD amount, which CloudCart fills in from the order.
3. BOX NOW sends the payment link. For some partner stores, BOX NOW's FAQ says the link arrives when the parcel is placed in the locker, and the card must have an active 3D Secure password.
4. The shopper pays and opens the locker with the PIN.
5. BOX NOW transfers the money to you on the terms in your contract. Ask BOX NOW for the COD fee and the payout schedule before you sign.

In CloudCart, BOX NOW appears at checkout for COD orders only when Enable cash on delivery is switched on in the BOX NOW app. This is the most common reason a store owner writes "BOX NOW lockers are not showing in my cart": if cash on delivery is the only payment method in the store and the switch is off, the platform hides every shipping method that cannot take COD, BOX NOW included, with its locker list.

Three more rules apply to COD with BOX NOW in CloudCart:

• Your contract must allow COD. The platform checks it, then checks your switch, then checks the amount against BOX NOW's own limit. Above the limit, COD is not offered for that order.
• You can set a lower limit yourself with the per-courier COD cap, for example to stop very large orders going to a locker unpaid.
• "Open before paying" needs the sender to pay for shipping. If the shopper pays the shipping, as is usual with COD, the option is not available.

Because the shopper pays by card at a BOX NOW locker anyway, many stores ask whether to take the card payment on the website instead. Paying in advance removes the risk of a parcel nobody collects. The trade-offs are compared in cash on delivery or card payment.

How do returns work with BOX NOW?

A shopper can send a parcel back through a BOX NOW locker when the store offers BOX NOW returns: the shopper fills in BOX NOW's returns form, gets a PIN and drops the parcel in any BOX NOW locker. BOX NOW runs the form on its returns portal and says the service is available at selected partner stores, so ask for it in your contract.

Returns are not optional for an online store. Under the EU Consumer Rights Directive, in force since 13 June 2014, a shopper who buys online can cancel within 14 days of delivery without giving a reason, and usually pays the return postage unless the seller offered to pay or did not mention the cost before the purchase. For faulty goods, the seller pays for the return (Your Europe: guarantees and returns). State in your terms who pays for a BOX NOW return, so the shopper is not surprised. The full return rules for a store in Bulgaria are in returns and consumer rights.

In CloudCart a BOX NOW return has two sides:

1. Turn on returns in the app. In Apps → BoxNow → Settings, switch on Allow return of shipment and fill in the name, country, postal code, address and note that define where returned parcels go. This can differ from your pickup point.
2. Issue the return shipment from the Shipments return tab of the BOX NOW app. The shopper then drops the parcel in a BOX NOW locker.
3. Record the return on the order. Open the order and use Issue return for the whole order or selected items. When you mark it received, the goods go back into stock and the credit note is issued.
4. Refund the shopper by card, bank transfer or CloudCart Wallet, or record it as an exchange.

The credit note matters because of Ordinance N-18, the Bulgarian rule on how online sales are registered and reported to the NRA (the National Revenue Agency). A return is the fiscal reversal of a sale, so it needs its own document; the invoicing side is on the invoices page.

How do you connect BOX NOW to a CloudCart store?

You connect BOX NOW from Apps in the CloudCart admin with three credentials from your BOX NOW contract, then set the sender, the rate table and cash on delivery.

1. Sign up with BOX NOW. Apply as a partner store on BOX NOW for e-shops. BOX NOW issues a Client ID, a Client secret and a Partner ID.
2. Install the app. In the admin, go to Apps and install BoxNow.
3. Enter the credentials and press Connect. CloudCart checks them with BOX NOW; "Invalid credentials" means one of the three fields is wrong.
4. Fill in the sender. Sender name, sender phone and sender email, then choose your pickup point from the list BOX NOW returns.
5. Choose how the price is calculated. BOX NOW returns no live quotes, so you pick one table: fixed price by order value, fixed price by weight, or by both. You can charge chosen categories differently.
6. Set cash on delivery and the default weight. Switch on Enable cash on delivery if you accept COD, and set the default weight for products without one.
7. Choose the content description that goes on the shipment: product name, SKU or barcode.
8. Test a locker order with a COD payment and a card payment, then create the shipping label from the order with Fulfill products.

Important: in the rate table, an empty "to" field means no upper limit. One row from 0 with an empty "to" covers every order. BOX NOW disappears from the cart only when no row matches, for example when the cart value is below the lowest "from".

When you create the label, CloudCart sends the shipment to BOX NOW and saves the tracking number on the order, and BOX NOW texts the shopper the PIN when the parcel reaches the locker. You print labels in A4 or A6, for one order or many. If the chosen locker fills up before you create the label, BOX NOW can reject it; you then pick another locker or ask the shopper to choose again. The label form field by field is in shipping labels from the admin.

Because BOX NOW is locker-only, the "To address" option is hidden for BOX NOW orders both in the checkout and when you edit the shipping address in the admin. If a shopper asks for home delivery, change the shipping method to Econt or Speedy.

How should you price BOX NOW delivery at checkout?

Set the BOX NOW price from your contract rate, and keep it at or below your office delivery price, because shoppers compare the options side by side. BOX NOW says its prices are flat-rate with no extra charge for Saturday deliveries, which makes a simple rate table easy to keep accurate.

Three common set-ups, all available with the BOX NOW pricing models in CloudCart:

Set-up	Pricing model	Good for
One price for every locker order	Fixed price by order value, one row from 0 with an empty "to"	Light products of similar size, such as cosmetics or accessories
Locker delivery included above an order value	Fixed price by order value: your price up to the threshold, 0 above it	Raising the average order with a free shipping threshold
Price by weight	Fixed price by weight, a few weight brackets up to 20 kg	Mixed catalogues, from a small item to a heavy box

BOX NOW also says stores can raise their average basket value by up to 20% with its lockers, which is the company's own claim, so measure it in your orders. How to set a free shipping threshold by courier is in free shipping thresholds with Bulgarian couriers.

A WooCommerce store reaches a similar set-up through a separate plugin for each courier; the differences are in Econt and Speedy on WooCommerce. Questions about connecting your BOX NOW contract can go to support@cloudcart.com, and plan prices are on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions