PUDO stands for pick-up and drop-off. It describes a network of physical locations - parcel lockers, convenience stores, pharmacies, and other service points - where shoppers collect or return parcels at a time that suits them, rather than waiting at home for a courier.
By 2025, Europe had roughly 646,000 active out-of-home delivery points: 462,000 PUDO locations and 184,000 automated parcel lockers, up from around 504,000 total at end of 2023 (Last Mile Experts, 2025). For retailers, PUDO is one of the most direct levers for improving checkout conversion, cutting failed-delivery costs, and expanding into new markets without adding delivery complexity.
PUDO stands for pick-up and drop-off. It is the shorthand used across the European logistics and ecommerce industry for any delivery model where the customer collects from or returns a parcel to a designated third-party location instead of their home address.
You will also encounter the term as "PUDO point", "PUDO location", or "PUDO delivery". Some carriers and markets use "service point", "parcel shop", or "parcel locker" to refer to specific variants of the same concept. Click and collect is closely related but usually refers to collection from a retailer's own stores rather than a carrier's network of third-party locations.
The shopper selects a PUDO option at checkout and chooses a specific location from a map - a nearby locker, newsagent, or supermarket - rather than entering a home delivery address. The carrier consolidates the delivery to that location, and the shopper receives a notification when the parcel is ready to collect. Most PUDO points hold parcels for two to seven days, giving the customer a generous collection window.
For returns, the process runs in reverse: the shopper drops the parcel at a PUDO point, the carrier collects from there on its regular route, and the retailer receives the item back.
The key difference from home delivery is timing control. Neither the carrier nor the customer needs to be available at the same moment. The carrier drops the parcel when it is efficient to do so; the customer collects when it is convenient.
PUDO is not a single format. The main types vary in availability, staffing, and shopper experience:
Offering more delivery options at checkout can increase conversion rates by up to 26% - and the mechanics are visible in how shoppers actually behave. According to Geopost's 2025 E-Shopper Barometer, 46% of regular European online shoppers now favour OOH delivery options, up 15 percentage points since 2019. When PUDO is absent or poorly presented at checkout, 14% of shoppers abandon their cart because of insufficient delivery options. Offering PUDO - with a visible map of nearby collection points - gives those shoppers a clear path to completing the order.
Flying Tiger Copenhagen saw this directly after adding proper PUDO choice to its checkout. Before the change, carriers assigned a PUDO location automatically on the retailer's behalf. The result was frequent disappointment: the pre-selected location was rarely the one the customer would have chosen.
"The inability for our shoppers to select their preferred PUDO point at the checkout was a big issue in delivering a positive customer experience."
Head of Digital Operations, Flying Tiger Copenhagen
After implementing PUDO choice through nShift, 70% of customers actively selected the new PUDO option and conversions rose 20%. The change also opened the door to scaling across European markets with confidence.
"Working with nShift, we now have the ability to successfully scale with confidence that we can expand the number of PUDO points we offer in both established and new markets."
Head of Digital Operations, Flying Tiger Copenhagen
Last-mile delivery accounts for 60-70% of total delivery cost, and home delivery fails on the first attempt for roughly 1 in 4 parcels in dense urban areas. A parcel delivered to a locker or staffed shop does not miss the customer. It sits there until collected, eliminating the redelivery cycle - the second and third courier attempts, the card-through-the-door notice, the customer chasing tracking updates. For carriers and retailers, fewer redeliveries mean lower cost per successful delivery. For customers, it means no anxiety about whether they will be home at the right moment.
A parcel in a locker is confirmed as received the moment the carrier deposits it, and the shopper gets a notification straight away. That combination - confirmed receipt, clear collection window, no ambiguity about location - substantially reduces "where is my order?" calls. Fewer inbound queries means lower customer service overhead for the same number of shipments.
PUDO consolidates deliveries. A locker or parcel shop handles 5 to 10 times more packages per route stop than door-to-door delivery. That consolidation translates directly to emissions: PUDO delivery produces 13-32% lower emissions per parcel compared to home delivery, rising to up to 67% in dense urban networks (Cross-Border Magazine). For retailers subject to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), per-parcel emissions data is becoming a compliance input, not just a brand story. PUDO is one of the more straightforward operational levers for bringing those figures down.
PUDO maturity varies sharply by country, and no single carrier covers all markets equally well. Poland leads Europe for locker density with 45,325 automated parcel machines and 17.3 OOH points per 10,000 inhabitants. France has 17,510 lockers, the UK 15,565. Italy tells a different story: it has 60,322 PUDO points but far fewer lockers, making parcel shops the dominant format there (Last Mile Experts, 2025). Consumer preference follows the infrastructure: 56% of Polish shoppers prefer lockers; in Sweden, parcel shops are the leading choice at 38% (DHL, 2025).
For retailers shipping cross-border, relying on a single carrier's OOH network means accepting gaps wherever that carrier's footprint is thin. The four largest European OOH operators alone show how different each network is in scale and composition:
| Operator | Europe OOH network (early 2026) |
| DHL eCommerce | 167,000+ service points, including 53,000+ lockers |
| Geopost / DPD | 150,000+ OOH points, including 50,000+ lockers |
| GLS | 130,000 OOH points (100,000 parcel shops + 30,000 lockers) |
| InPost | 94,500 OOH points (61,000+ lockers + 33,000+ PUDO points) |
Retailers connecting through nShift reach all four networks without a separate integration for each.
Not all PUDO networks deliver the same shopper experience. Before committing to a carrier or platform, consider:
A few things are worth planning for. Lockers have physical capacity limits, and popular locations can fill up during peak periods - Black Friday, Christmas, and post-holiday returns windows. Parcel size restrictions mean large or heavy items may not qualify for certain locker formats, so a rule engine that filters by weight and dimensions is important. In markets where home delivery has historically dominated, consumer awareness of PUDO can take time to build: presenting the option clearly at checkout, with a visible map and a short dwell-window reminder, closes most of the familiarity gap.
nShift Checkout connects to more than 1,000 carriers, including the major PUDO and locker networks across Europe. An interactive map widget inside the checkout lets shoppers see and select a PUDO point at the moment they place their order.
Retailers control which locations appear and under what conditions. A rule engine lets you show or hide specific PUDO options based on basket contents, weight, postcode, destination country, or carrier availability. Custom PUDO points can be added for a retailer's own stores or branded locations and surfaced alongside the carrier network.
For returns, the same infrastructure handles drop-off routing. A shopper selecting a return method can be shown the closest PUDO point for their preferred carrier, reducing friction in the reverse logistics flow.
Getting PUDO live does not require a separate integration with each carrier. nShift connects to the major European PUDO and locker networks through pre-built carrier connectors, so retailers go live on a carrier by adding a configuration rather than writing new API code. Custom PUDO locations - a retailer's own stores, franchise counters, or branded drop points - can be loaded via CSV upload and surfaced in the checkout map alongside the carrier network without additional development work.
For most retailers, the practical questions are concrete: which PUDO sites should appear for which products, how access control works for lockers versus staffed counters, and what happens when a parcel is too large or too heavy for a specific location type. The rule engine handles those questions without custom code, which means adding a new market or carrier does not require a development sprint.
Access control is part of that operational design. Lockers rely on PIN codes, QR codes, app authentication, or one-time collection credentials; staffed parcel shops rely on barcode scanning and ID checks. For access-controlled PUDO sites such as apartment lockers, office buildings, campuses, residential developments, or gated retail locations, the checkout and carrier data need to carry the right collection instructions so the shopper can retrieve the parcel without contacting support.
Automated notifications and order tracking are equally important. A PUDO delivery works best when shoppers receive clear messages at every step: order confirmed, parcel dispatched, parcel ready for collection, collection reminder, and return accepted. Those notifications need to include the chosen location, opening hours or locker availability, collection code, and dwell time. When tracking events flow back into the retailer's order management and customer service tools, agents can see the same delivery status as the shopper, reducing avoidable "where is my order?" contacts.
Before launching, the rule engine lets retailers test exactly which PUDO options appear for which shoppers: filter by postcode, basket weight, destination country, or carrier availability, and run A/B experiments to compare conversion rates between delivery option sets. That means retailers can validate the setup on a subset of traffic before rolling it out fully, reducing the risk of a configuration that surprises shoppers in a market where expectations differ.
Flying Tiger Copenhagen is one example - the company used nShift to expand PUDO delivery into new European markets without rebuilding carrier integrations for each one. The nShift carrier network covers PUDO networks across Europe, and retailers can browse coverage by country and delivery type before selecting partners for each market.
Talk to nShift to see how PUDO fits your checkout and carrier setup.
OOH delivery has been growing steadily for a decade, but the direction is shifting. Geopost's April 2026 positioning frames OOH as a default delivery choice rather than a niche alternative, with 46% consumer preference already matching or exceeding home delivery in several northern and central European markets.
Locker technology is moving faster than the network numbers suggest. Real-time availability APIs let a checkout widget show whether a specific locker has capacity before the shopper selects it, and re-route to the nearest alternative if it is full. Automated notifications can alert a shopper before they make a wasted trip, and trigger a collection reminder before the dwell window closes. Larger locker compartments are expanding what parcel sizes qualify, eroding the restriction that historically pushed bulkier items to staffed shops.
At the network level, GLS has set a target of 30,000 own-branded lockers by 2030, roughly tripling its current locker footprint. InPost reported mid-to-high-teen volume growth through 2025 and is continuing to expand its locker estate across its newer markets in Western Europe. The returns direction is also consolidating: OOH is becoming the primary returns channel in markets where it is well established, driven by shopper preference for flexibility and retailer preference for lower reverse-logistics cost per parcel.
For retailers, the practical consequence is that PUDO is not a single integration decision. Network density, locker technology maturity, and consumer adoption vary enough between markets that the platforms and carriers worth connecting to in the UK differ from the right choices in Poland, Italy, or France.