BOPIS Explained: Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store and Actually Save More

BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store) lets you shop online and collect your order at the store, skipping shipping fees entirely. Learn how it works, which retailers execute it best, and how to combine promo codes with store pickup to get the most out of every order.

You’re at checkout, the cart total looks right, and then you see it: $8.99 shipping. The item is 12 minutes from your house. The store has it in stock. You could have it today.

That’s the exact moment BOPIS was invented for.

What Is BOPIS?

BOPIS stands for Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store. You shop on a retailer’s website or app, select in-store pickup at checkout instead of a shipping option, and collect your order at the store once it’s confirmed ready. No delivery window. No shipping fee. No chance of the package sitting on your porch in the rain.

The model grew out of a straightforward tension: shoppers wanted online convenience, retailers wanted their foot traffic back. Both sides found a workable tradeoff. It stuck. US click-and-collect sales hit $154.3 billion in 2025, per eMarketer, and that figure is projected to grow to $177.9 billion in 2026.

That’s not a niche experiment anymore.

Types of BOPIS Pickup

Not all store pickup works the same way. Here’s what you’ll encounter at most major retailers:

Standard In-Store Pickup

You go inside to a designated counter, show your order confirmation (usually on your phone), and pick up your item. Target has a clearly marked Order Pickup section near the front entrance. Best Buy sends you to the customer service counter. Walmart’s is typically near the main entrance on the grocery side. Wait times once you arrive are usually short, assuming the store has confirmed your order is ready.

Curbside Pickup

You pull into a marked spot, check in through the retailer’s app, and a store associate brings your order out. You never leave your car. This format took off during 2020 and held on because it’s actually useful. Nearly half of all click-and-collect shoppers now use curbside specifically.

One thing we’ve noticed tracking BOPIS across dozens of stores: retailers with dedicated app-based curbside check-in tend to have faster ready times. Target’s Drive Up is consistently faster than email-only notification systems because the app tells the associate you’ve arrived in real time.

Locker Pickup

Some retailers use secure lockers where you retrieve your order with a unique code. Amazon Lockers are the most recognized version, often located at Whole Foods or partner locations. Walmart also offers them at select locations. Lockers are often accessible outside regular store hours, which makes them useful for early morning or late evening pickups.

Ship-to-Store

If an item isn’t available at your local branch, some retailers will ship it from a warehouse to the store for pickup. You still collect in person, but there’s a brief transit wait first. Not exactly BOPIS in the pure sense, but most retailers list it under the same umbrella.

How BOPIS Works: Step by Step

The experience is consistent across most retailers. Here’s the flow:

1. Browse and add to cart on the retailer’s website or app
2. Select “Store Pickup” or “In-Store Pickup” at checkout, not a shipping option
3. Choose your preferred store from nearby locations (most sites auto-detect your area)
4. Apply any promo codes now, before confirming the order
5. Place the order and receive your confirmation
6. Wait for the “ready for pickup” notification via email or SMS. This can take anywhere from under an hour to the next business day depending on store volume and inventory sync
7. Head to the store with your confirmation and a photo ID if required
8. Collect at the designated pickup area or pull into a curbside spot

Don’t skip step 6. Showing up before the ready notification is the most common BOPIS frustration, both for the shopper and store staff. The item might physically be in the store but not yet staged or confirmed at the pickup counter.

Why Shoppers Use BOPIS

Convenience is the short answer, but that’s too vague. The specific reasons matter if you’re deciding whether it’s worth it for a particular order:

Avoiding shipping fees. This is the main reason for most deal-seekers. Shipping typically adds $5 to $15 per order at retailers without a free shipping threshold. On a $30 item, a $7.99 shipping fee is a 27% cost increase. BOPIS removes that entirely.

Same-day availability. For something you need today, BOPIS beats any shipping option. Even 2-day shipping doesn’t help if you’re making dinner on Thursday and need it Thursday afternoon.

Package security. Porch theft is a real problem in urban areas and apartment buildings. Store pickup eliminates the risk completely. The package doesn’t exist at your address until you carry it home.

On-the-spot inspection. You can check the item before you leave the parking lot. Wrong size, damaged box, wrong color? You deal with it at the store’s customer service desk immediately. No packing, no return label, no waiting for a refund to process.

Worth the hassle? For a lot of shopping situations, yes. But there’s a catch most BOPIS guides don’t highlight.

The Upsell Problem (And How to Not Fall For It)

Before you wander into the store to grab your order, here’s something to factor in: 85% of BOPIS shoppers make additional unplanned purchases during pickup, per a Doddle study. Retailers know this. Store layout around pickup areas is not accidental.

Target’s Order Pickup section sits near seasonal and impulse displays. Walmart’s pickup counters are positioned near the grocery entrance, not the exit. The route from “here’s your order” to “you can leave” passes several high-margin sections designed to catch your eye.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use BOPIS. It means going in with a plan. Know what you came for, collect it, and leave. The savings from skipping shipping fees can disappear quickly at an unplanned checkout.

BOPIS and Coupons: How to Stack Your Savings

This is where BOPIS gets interesting for deal-seekers, and where most articles don’t go far enough.

Most stores let you apply promo codes during online checkout before selecting your pickup option. That means the order goes: find code, add to cart, enter promo code, then select store pickup. If you pick the store first, some checkout flows lock you out of the code field or apply different promotions.

What most guides miss is that some stores push pickup-exclusive promo codes through their apps that never appear in standard coupon roundups. These aren’t in any aggregator’s database because they’re triggered by app behavior, not standard code entry fields. Worth opening the retailer app before you build your cart and checking “Store Offers” or “Pickup Deals” sections.

The combination works especially well at Kohl’s, where Kohl’s Cash rewards apply to BOPIS orders, their store card discount stacks on top of promo codes, and additional percentage-off codes can sometimes layer on top of that. Three discount sources on a single pickup order is possible if you time it right. Target’s Circle app coupons apply to pickup orders the same way they do to in-store purchases.

From watching coupon usage patterns across the stores we track, BOPIS orders that combine a site-wide promo code with a loyalty reward tend to outperform standard shipping orders on net savings, even before the shipping fee offset. The friction of driving to a store actually filters for more deliberate purchases, which means the coupon is applied to something you actually wanted.

BOPIS vs. Free Shipping: When to Use Which

BOPIS isn’t automatically better than free shipping.

If you’re already hitting the store’s free shipping minimum, the choice becomes about speed and convenience, not cost. Both are free. Pick based on whether you need the item today.

If you’re below the free shipping threshold, BOPIS wins on cost: no shipping fee, no need to pad your cart with extra items. The break-even is simple. If the nearest store is 15 minutes away and you’re near that part of town anyway, store pickup saves both the fee and the cart inflation.

Here’s the case where shipping wins: the store is 30+ minutes out of your way, you don’t need the item urgently, and you’re close to or above the free shipping minimum. Time has value. A $7.99 shipping fee might be worth it to avoid a special trip.

DontPayFull tracks free shipping thresholds across hundreds of retailers, which helps you make the call before you get to checkout. Thresholds vary more than most people expect, and some stores offer lower minimums for loyalty members or email subscribers.

What BOPIS Means for Retailers (And Why It Affects the Deals You See)

To understand the “why” behind some BOPIS deals, you have to look at it from the retailer’s side.

Retailers ship in bulk to stores rather than individual packages to homes, which is far cheaper per unit. Some pass a portion of those savings on through pickup-exclusive deals, particularly during peak seasons when shipping costs spike. If you’re seeing a BOPIS-specific promo code around Thanksgiving week, that’s often why.

Foot traffic has real value too. 82.7% of top US retail chains offered BOPIS in 2023, up from 76.3% the year before. Retailers aren’t adding this because they feel like it. They’re adding it because the in-store foot traffic, the upsell opportunities, and the lower shipping costs make it profitable even when they attach a deal to it.

BOPIS also gives retailers better inventory data. An in-store pickup tied to local stock tells the system exactly what’s at that location. That tends to mean more accurate “in stock” indicators online, and we’ve found that translates to fewer order cancellations compared to pure e-commerce fulfillment from a central warehouse.

BOPIS vs. Click and Collect: Is There a Difference?

You’ll see both terms used, sometimes interchangeably. The distinction is real but subtle.

BOPIS refers specifically to pickup at the retailer’s own physical store location. Click and collect is the broader category. It includes BOPIS plus pickup at partner locations, third-party locker spots, collection points at transit hubs, and any arrangement where you order online and pick up somewhere other than a delivery address.

In practice, US retailers typically say “BOPIS” or just “store pickup.” UK retailers say “click and collect.” The shopping experience is nearly identical. Both eliminate home delivery.

ROPIS: The Reserve-First Variant

Worth knowing if you’ve seen this term: ROPIS stands for Reserve Online, Pick Up In-Store. Instead of completing the purchase online, you reserve the item and pay at the store when you collect it.

The appeal is being able to inspect before committing. Some retailers, particularly in furniture and apparel, use ROPIS when they want to give customers the comfort of physical inspection without losing the pre-committed pickup. You don’t see it as often as pure BOPIS, but it shows up at specialty retailers where item variation or fit matters.

The Execution Gap: Not All BOPIS Is Equal

Here’s the thing most BOPIS content skips. The 2025 Omnichannel Retail Index found 88% of retailers offer BOPIS, but only 77% can guarantee pickup within three hours. That’s a real gap between availability and reliable execution.

Retailers that invested in dedicated pickup teams and real-time inventory sync tend to hit their promised windows. Target and Walmart are the clearest examples. Smaller chains or department stores with less infrastructure can struggle during busy periods.

Best Buy is generally fast for electronics. Target’s Drive Up is hard to beat for curbside. Macy’s can be slower, particularly for clothing items that might be in transit between departments. Knowing which stores execute well versus which ones are aspirationally fast is something you learn from tracking orders over time.

The AI Layer Coming to BOPIS

This is developing quickly enough to mention. AI investment among retailers hit 92% of major chains in 2025, largely to improve inventory accuracy for BOPIS fulfillment. When an item shows as “in stock for pickup,” retailers increasingly want that to be accurate, not an approximation based on yesterday’s data.

Walmart is deploying Digital Shelf Labels to 2,300 stores by 2026, which cuts BOPIS staging time by reducing manual steps between order confirmation and item readiness. AI shopping assistants like Amazon’s Rufus can now autonomously arrange in-store pickup when prompted. The technology is moving from behind-the-scenes inventory management to front-end ordering.

The bottom line for shoppers: BOPIS is getting faster and more reliable.

Popular Stores for BOPIS

Most major US retailers now offer BOPIS. Here’s how the experience differs across the ones we track most closely:

BOPIS Challenges to Know Before You Order

A few things that trip people up:

Not all items are BOPIS-eligible. Large appliances, special orders, items not locally stocked, and some grocery categories can’t be picked up in-store. The website will tell you, but check before assuming.

Ready times vary. “Ready in 2 hours” is an estimate. During the holiday season, it stretches to next-day. If you need something by a specific time, order with buffer.

Pickup windows expire. Most retailers hold orders for 3 to 14 days. Miss the window and the order is canceled and restocked. Target holds for 3 days; Best Buy for 5 business days. You’ll get reminder notifications, but check the policy at order time if your schedule is unpredictable.

Stock can get oversold. Inventory sync isn’t perfect at every retailer. You might place an order and receive a “can’t fulfill” notification if the stock count was off. Retailers handle this with a refund, but it’s frustrating when you were counting on same-day availability.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is BOPIS free?

Yes. Store pickup and curbside pickup are free at virtually all major US retailers. There’s no pickup fee. The cost saving versus paid shipping is typically $5 to $15 per order.

How long will the store hold my order?

It varies by retailer. Target holds for 3 days, Best Buy for 5 business days, Walmart varies by category. You’ll get reminder emails before the window closes, but know the window at order time if you’re traveling or have a packed schedule.

Can I stack coupons with BOPIS orders?

Yes, in most cases. Apply your promo code during the online checkout step, before selecting store pickup. The code applies to the order total the same as it would for a shipped order. Loyalty rewards (Target Circle, Kohl’s Rewards, My Best Buy) apply too.

Does BOPIS count toward loyalty points?

At most major retailers, yes. You’re making a full purchase with online checkout, just choosing a different fulfillment method. Target Circle, Kohl’s Rewards, and Best Buy’s Rewards program all apply to BOPIS orders.

Can someone else pick up my order?

Often yes. Most retailers let you designate an alternate pickup person when placing the order. The alternate person needs a valid ID and the order confirmation number. Set this up before the order is ready, not after.

What’s the difference between BOPIS and curbside pickup?

BOPIS is the broader category. Curbside pickup is one format of BOPIS. With standard BOPIS you go inside to a pickup counter; with curbside, you stay in your car and an associate brings the order out. Both are free, both skip shipping.

What is ROPIS?

ROPIS stands for Reserve Online, Pick Up In-Store. Instead of paying at checkout online, you reserve the item and pay when you collect it in person. Less common than BOPIS but used by some specialty retailers where customers want to inspect before committing.

What happens if my order is wrong or damaged at pickup?

Handle it at the store immediately. That’s one of the practical advantages of BOPIS over home delivery. If something is wrong, you can exchange on the spot without shipping anything. Bring your order confirmation.

Our team regularly tests deals and pickup options at the stores mentioned here. We track coupons and promotions across 20,000+ stores on our platform.

Sources

1. eMarketer: US Click-and-Collect Forecast: US click-and-collect sales projections, $154.3 billion in 2025 growing to $177.9 billion in 2026
2. Digital Commerce 360: BOPIS Retail Adoption: 82.7% of top US retail chains offered BOPIS in 2023, up from 76.3% in 2022
3. Retail Dive: BOPIS Upsell Behavior: 85% of BOPIS shoppers make additional in-store purchases during pickup (Doddle study)
4. BusinessWire/ResearchAndMarkets: US BOPIS Market Forecast: US BOPIS market projected at $509.4 billion by 2033 at 16.45% CAGR

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