Some Costa Rican merchants are quietly weighing a return to cash. The reason is a plan by the Ministry of Hacienda to scrutinize the mobile-payment numbers that businesses use most heavily, part of a broader push to catch commercial income that never reaches a tax return. For a country that has embraced digital payments faster than almost anywhere in Latin America, the announcement has unsettled shop owners who fear that a tool they rely on daily could now draw the attention of the tax authority.
At the center of the concern is SINPE Móvil, the Banco Central de Costa Rica system that lets anyone move money using only a phone number. It has become the default way to pay for a coffee, settle a bill, or buy from a neighborhood shop. According to Banco Central figures cited by Hacienda, the platform recorded roughly 650 million transfers in 2024, and in 2025 it moved more than ₡12.5 trillion (about $27.7 billion at the current reference rate of roughly ₡450 to the dollar). As of May 2026, there were more than 4.8 million active subscriptions, well above one per adult.
Hacienda says the goal is not to tax those transfers but to identify numbers that behave like a business rather than a private individual. Officials have indicated that phone numbers receiving a high volume of monthly transactions will be flagged for review, on the reasoning that such activity points to undeclared sales. Tax specialists quoted in local coverage have stressed that the ministry does not intend to inspect every person-to-person transfer, but rather to focus on accounts showing the pattern of a commercial operation.
The specific volume that triggers scrutiny is not yet settled in public statements. Reports this week point to numbers receiving more than 100 transactions per month as the level of interest, a figure that traces back to a statistical data request Hacienda made to the Banco Central earlier this year.
Separately, the vice minister of revenue, Víctor Julio Carvajal, said in earlier remarks that a number receiving more than 150 transactions in a month “necessarily” reflects commercial activity. The two figures come from different contexts, and Hacienda has not published a single confirmed operational threshold.
The monitoring sits alongside a formal rule change now moving through the system. In late June, the ministry opened a public consultation on a reform to Article 22 of the Reglamento del Procedimiento Tributario, the regulation governing tax procedure. The reform would require taxpayers to register with the Dirección General de Tributación the phone number or numbers they use to receive payments for their economic activity, whether through SINPE Móvil or similar authorized platforms. The draft decree carries the signatures of President Laura Fernández and Finance Minister Rodrigo Chaves. Once the consultation period closes, the ministry has said it will proceed to formalize and publish the measure.
Carvajal has described the initiative as a matter of formalization rather than a new levy. He has said the ministry is not placing a tax on SINPE, nor charging commissions, but seeking information that allows for proper collection of taxes already owed. Miguel Ángel Solís Sánchez, director general de Tributación, said the ministry’s own enforcement work had turned up significant signs of evasion through the platform, with taxpayers receiving payments this way specifically to avoid reporting them. The Colegio de Contadores Públicos de Costa Rica has publicly backed the reform, arguing it would improve traceability and, on balance, benefit small and medium enterprises.
The pushback has come from merchants who worry that any additional visibility invites audits, and some have said they are considering steering more sales toward cash. That impulse runs against the national trend. A McKinsey & Company study found that only two in ten Costa Ricans prefer to pay in cash, placing the country third-lowest in Latin America for physical-money use, behind only Chile and Argentina.
One former tax official has estimated that if roughly half of last year’s SINPE Móvil volume corresponded to commercial payments made without an electronic invoice, the potential value-added-tax gap could run into hundreds of billions of colones, an estimate that has not been confirmed by the ministry.
For foreign residents who run a small business, rent out property, or invoice clients through a Costa Rican phone number, the practical takeaway is narrow but real. The measure does not tax transfers or touch ordinary personal payments between friends and family. It does signal that income received through SINPE Móvil for goods or services is expected to appear in electronic invoices and tax declarations, and that the numbers used to collect it may soon have to be registered with Tributación
