A study carried out by the Office of the Financial Consumer (OCF) allows the creation of a profile of Costa Ricans who prefer to use credit cards and those who opt not to use them. The results were released this past week.
According to the findings, in Costa Rica 46 out of every 100 consumers have a credit card. An estimate made by the OCF regarding these findings is that around 2.9 million people in Costa Rica have a debit or credit card or both.
“(The study) allows us to know more precisely what the Costa Rican consumer is like, what their habits and behaviors are like when dealing with such important financial products (…) The idea is that we can have much harder information, not based on what we believe” , said the general director of this office, Danilo Montero.
Who uses the credit?
The study concluded that those who have paid work and who have enough “for the basics and a little more” are those who have two or more credit cards. Meanwhile, young people between 18 and 24 years old and whose income “is not enough” usually have only one of these credit tools. 46% of those who have a credit card say they use it once a week and 17% say they use it every day.
“Debit allows you to save”
On the other hand, the study also investigated the reasons why they prefer to use debit or credit. Those who use the first option point out that this way they spend less and also prefer to pay in cash.
Of those who use credit cards, the majority said that they do so thinking of obtaining the benefits of their card’s points system, more so when it comes to large purchases.
The study determined that while 42.5% of men have both types of cards, the percentage drops to 30% when it comes to women. “It reflects the efforts that we need to make in the bankarization of women and other sectors of the Costa Rican population,” said Montero.
According to the respondents, the majority of banks that issued their credit cards are BAC, Banco Nacional and BCR. In debit, the Banco Nacional, Banco de Costa Rica, BAC and Banco Popular lead.
To arrive at these results, 1,406 people aged 18 or over, men and women, residents of urban and rural areas throughout the country were interviewed. It has a margin of error of 2.8%.
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