Costa Rica Has the Second Highest Growth in the Fintech Industry in Central America

Costa Rica obtained the second highest growth in the fintech industry in Central America according to a study carried out by the company Misión Lunar.

“Fintech comapnies have the advantage of being born as digital native players, with the opportunity to serve market segments underserved by traditional financial players. In markets with low levels of banking and high use of cash, this represents a challenge and an opportunity at the same time, since they can improve financial inclusion rates due to the ability to increase access to financial services through technology,” pointed out the analysis.

In Costa Rica, this sector grew by 24.4% according to the Fintech Ecosystem of Central America and the Caribbean 2023 , going from 49 fintech companies in 2022 to 61 last year.

The payments segment leads nationally with 26%, followed by financial software with 19%, credit with 10%, crypto with 8% and digital bank, insurtech and trading with 1% each.

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Costa Rica also stands out for being one of the countries with the best communication between innovators and regulatory authorities.

The country with the highest growth was El Salvador with 45%, going from 22 to 32 firms, however, it registers fewer fintech companies than Costa Rica.

At the regional level, 272 fintech companies s were identified in the ecosystem, 41 new firms were incorporated and for the first time, the Dominican Republic was included.

Mastercard consolidates itself as an ally of the fintech sector

For Mastercard, Costa Rica is fertile ground for fintech, which is why it has assumed the responsibility of being a guide at the business level, with the development of a solid program that encourages their participation within the organization and that at the same time time has been the platform to expose oneself to the more than 11 thousand fintech companies that are registered globally.

“At Mastercard we deeply believe in user security regarding the same transactions and that is why we trust that countries like Costa Rica are much more prepared to take other steps and also allow this ecosystem to be accessible to all, so “We have strengthened and optimized our architecture so that Fintech companies can build in our ecosystem, with improvements, for example, in our APIs or SDKs, in addition to other programs, which are becoming more consolidated every day,” Barquero emphasized.

In this sense, Mastercard launched Accelerate, an initiative that aims to promote the sustained and comprehensive growth of fintech companies around the world.

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(Featured image by César Badilla Miranda via Unsplash)

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First published in LAREPUBLICA, a third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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