QCOSTARICA — Costa Rica has established itself as a leader in the adoption of digital payments in Central America.
With high levels of banking access and a growing digital culture, the country is participating in a regional effort led by Mastercard that seeks to eliminate manual data entry and passwords for digital payments by 2030.
Currently, 90% of Costa Ricans over the age of 15 use formal financial services and 80% make purchases online, positioning the country as one of the most prepared in Central America to adopt new payment technologies, according to data shared by the company.
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Among the innovations that will enable this change are tokenization, which replaces sensitive card data with unique codes that are more difficult to crack; the Click to Pay system, which streamlines the payment process without having to enter card data for each purchase; and passkeys, which use biometric authentication instead of traditional passwords.
These technologies have been shown to reduce fraud in digital transactions.
In Latin America, tokenization has reduced fraud by 20 basis points, and currently, more than 35% of the company’s transactions are already tokenized.
While in-person payments have improved thanks to technologies such as chip and contactless, online purchases still face challenges such as friction in the payment process and the risk of fraud, according to Kattia Montero, Country Manager for Mastercard in Costa Rica.
E-commerce in Costa Rica reached US$5.5 billion in sales in 2023, according to data from Payments and Commerce Market Intelligence.
The expectation is that more secure and simple technologies will contribute to increasing these figures in the coming years.
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This process, which is already underway, could also benefit merchants with higher approval rates, fewer abandoned purchases, and an overall improvement in consumer confidence.
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