Costa Rica’s businesses are trying to catch up technology-wise and offer consumers contactless credit card payment options. The technology means cashiers have no contact with your card and don’t ask for your ID when you pay for a product.

Many consumers prefer this, as it minimizes the risk of personal data being stolen or a card being forgotten at the store if a cashier forgets to give it back. Although it does offer a loophole for a stolen card to be more readily used to make a purchase, admit credit card companies.

Contactless cards have a chip and an emblem that looks like radio waves to indicate the card can simply be held in front of an enabled point-of-sale terminal for a contactless payment to be processed.

With this technology, paying with a credit card is almost as simple and even faster than handing over a paper bill, only you don’t need to wait for the change!

Currently, at least 90,000 businesses in Costa Rica are using the contactless technology at their check-out counters.

Nearly half of the eight million cards issued in Costa Rica utilize this new facet, and the Costa Rican Central Bank has said that by December 31, 2018, all credit cards issued in the country should include the contactless chip technology.

 

Likewise, to facilitate purchases, the bank is preparing a policy that would allow for consumers to make purchases of under 10,000 colones without presenting their ID card in Costa Rica.

Research by MasterCard Canada shows that consumers are likely to spend more money when using a contactless cards due to the ease of small transactions. The company has seen “about 25 percent” higher spending by users of its Mastercard Contactless-brand RFID credit cards.