Payments and e-commerce in Costa Rica

Over eighty percent of Costa Ricans have Internet access and almost seventy percent have an Internet-enabled smartphone. The most popular e-commerce site in Costa Rica is Mercadolibre [1]. In 2022, the country’s e-commerce market was worth an estimated US$1.7 billion, expected to rise to US2.7 billion by 2025 [2]. The most popular e-commerce categories in Costa Rica include fashion, toys, electronics, food and personal-care items [3]. 

Exactly 70% of Costa Ricans have a bank account. Costa Rica has also been advanced in adopting digital and alternative payments. It was one of the first countries in Latin America to adopt contactless payments [4]. The value of the digital-payments market in Costa Rica was an estimated US$2.4 billion in 2022 — a figure expected to grow by 13% a year to at least 2027 [5].

1. https://www.usabusiness.co.in/e-commerce-websites-costa-rica
2. https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/ecommerce/costa-rica
3. https://merchants.glopal.com/en-gb/google-shopping/costa-rica
4. https://www.antit.io/blog/costa-rica-at-the-forefront-of-digital-payments
5. https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/fintech/digital-payments/costa-rica