In simple English
Most shopping software assumes buyers pay online with a card. In countries like Pakistan, buyers pay cash when the courier arrives at the door. Up to two in every five parcels are returned without payment, which causes merchants to lose money. This open-source software is an online store engine built specifically for cash-on-delivery markets. It helps you track courier cash, verify orders before dispatch, and sell digital gift codes safely.
What it is
Bazaar Commerce is an open-source multi-vendor marketplace engine built on MedusaJS (a modular ecommerce framework) and Mercur (a multi-vendor extension) using TypeScript (a programming language that adds safety rules to JavaScript). It provides a double-entry accounting ledger keyed on courier cash delivery, an order confirmation gate to prevent returns, and an encrypted digital code vault.
What it is good for
Solo builders launching an online marketplace in emerging markets where cash on delivery is the primary payment method and standard western shopping software fails.
- Includes a double-entry accounting ledger that tracks courier cash remittances and tax withholding.
- Features an order confirmation check over messaging apps to stop fake orders before you ship.
- Secures digital game codes and gift cards inside an encrypted database vault using AES-256-GCM (an advanced method for scrambling data so nobody can read it without the secret key).
- Needs several external tools running at the same time, including Docker (a way to run a program inside its own sealed box, so it cannot break anything else on your server) and Bun (a fast JavaScript runtime environment).
- Pre-production software with open issues, meaning you will need to fix bugs yourself.
- SMS and WhatsApp messaging gateways are not contracted yet, so verification messages only print to your console during local testing.
custom marketplace scripts or poorly adapted western ecommerce software
MedusaJS
- saleor/saleor23k stars
Another open-source ecommerce platform, though designed primarily for card and digital payments rather than cash on delivery.
- hledgerorg/hledger4.8k stars
Double-entry accounting over plain text files, with command-line, terminal, web and editor interfaces.
- akaunting/akaunting10k stars
Self-hosted invoicing and expense tracking, with the double-entry accounting sold separately as an add-on.
- ledger/ledger6.1k stars
Double-entry accounting from a plain text file, run from the command line, with no database of any kind.
git clone https://github.com/Cubitrek/bazaar-commerce.git cd bazaar-commerce bun install docker compose up -d cd packages/api bunx medusa db:migrate bun run seed:pk bun run dev