QCOSTARICA – Google Wallet is now available in Costa Rica. Through it, people will be able to make contactless payments from their Android, Wear OS and Fitbit devices with Mastercard or Visa cards from the following financial institutions: Banco de Costa Rica (BCR), BAC Credomatic and Banco Promerica.
Cash remains the most widely used payment method in Costa Rica.
According to the latest Estudio del Uso de Tarjetas (Study on the Use of Cards) carried out by the Oficina del Consumidor Financiero (OCF) – Office of the Financial Consumer, 65% of the people surveyed use cash, which they take out from the ATM to make their purchases, because they prefer it before using their credit or debit card.
However, with high mobile penetration and a rapidly growing digital commerce environment, businesses and consumers demand that digital payments be simple, secure and accessible.
“Accessibility is critical to bringing technology benefits to everyone everywhere; The use of technological tools such as the Google Wallet represents an opportunity to increase transactions that are carried out digitally and accelerate the economic growth of countries,” says Giovanni Stella, Director of Google for Colombia, Central America and the Caribbean.
With Google Wallet, people will be able to make contactless payments from their phones using the credit and debit cards they save on the device.
Making digital payments accessible requires working with the financial ecosystem and with different allies. For the launch of the Google Wallet in Costa Rica, in this first stage, we work with the issuers Mastercard and Visa, as well as with the following financial institutions: Banco de Costa Rica (BCR), BAC Credomatic and Banco Promerica.
We are promoting collaboration with other companies, including Davivienda, which would allow new services to be used through the Wallet in the near future.
“Working together helps us create products that are useful to all people. Making use of our infrastructure and technological platform to connect more clients with a formal financial system and digitize objects to use them from our device, allows us to contribute to societies moving from cash to convenient and secure digital economies,” added Stella.
We are promoting collaboration with other companies, including Davivienda, which would allow new services to be used through the Wallet in the near future. Just like in the physical world, we know that people keep valuable information and items in their wallets, so privacy and security are the cornerstones of Google Wallet.
When using the Wallet, transactions are made with an alternate card number (a token), which is device-specific and associated with a dynamic security code that changes with each transaction. We give everyone transparency and granular control over how this information is managed. To do this, people can update and manage these settings from the Google Wallet app or on a computer.
Also, if the user loses their device, they can simply use the “Find My Device” feature to instantly lock it from anywhere, protect it with a new password, or even wipe their personal information.
