Currency and formatting
- Currency
- Costa Rican Colon (CRC)
- Symbol
- ₡ — placed before the amount
- Decimal places
- 2
- Formatted example
- ₡123 456,78
- Thousands separator
- Decimal separator
- ,
- Digit grouping
- threes (3)
- Live rate
- No central-bank source publishes CRC yet
Tax
- 4% — health
- 1% — basic goods
- 2% — medicines education
Payment methods in Costa Rica
Roughly ordered by real-world use — not by what a card processor would prefer you offer.
- 01 card
- 02 sinpe movil
- 03 bank transfer
Card schemes that work domestically: visa, mastercard. 3-D Secure is standard practice; strong customer authentication is not legally mandated.
Locale
- Primary
- es-CR
- Official languages
- Spanish
- Direction
- left-to-right
- Date format
- DD/MM/YYYY
- Measurement
- metric
- GDPR applies
- no
Phone numbers
- Calling code
- +506
- Mobile format
- +506 XXXX XXXX
- Digits
- 8
Costa Rica: common questions
What currency does Costa Rica use?
Costa Rica uses the Costa Rican Colon (CRC), symbol ₡. It uses 2 decimal places, formatted as ₡123 456,78.
How many decimal places does CRC have?
CRC has 2 decimal places. Charging with the wrong number of minor units is a 100× error, so this is worth getting right.
What is the IVA rate in Costa Rica?
The standard IVA rate in Costa Rica is 13.00%. Prices are displayed tax-inclusive.
What payment methods are used in Costa Rica?
The methods that matter in Costa Rica, in rough order of use: card, sinpe movil, bank transfer.
What is the dialling code for Costa Rica?
Costa Rica's country calling code is +506. Mobile numbers are formatted +506 XXXX XXXX (8 digits after the country code).
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