Cash Out Cash on Delivery

Here’s how it works: Using a virtual private network, Drysdales’ system is polled every 15 minutes for orders that have a Western Union payment type. The data are sent to a central Western Union server, and the customer number and order number are sent to every Western Union agent in the country. The customer goes to a Western Union agent, provides the order’s number and exact amount of the purchase in cash. The transaction is fed to the Western Union server where the network feeds the data back to Drysdales. Once the transaction is verified, Drysdales ships the order. Drysdales paid a one-time fee of $5,000 to Sigma-Micro to set up the real-time connection with Western Union and to integrate the service with Drysdales’ CMS, says Proctor.