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Cubadebate, one of the main official media outlets of the Cuban regime, published an opinion piece that openly acknowledges that the bancarization policy promoted by the government has failed in practice.
The text, signed by Oscar Figueredo Reinaldo and titled "Banking in Ellipses," describes with an unusual rawness for state media the gap between the official discourse on digital payments and what happens every day on the streets of Cuba.
Figueredo Reinaldo recounts a scene that, as he admits, he has experienced "more than once, in different places and with different faces": he tries to pay with his phone and encounters responses that have become part of everyday life: "there's no system," "it won't go through right now," "cash only," or the most unsettling of all, said almost in a whisper: "if it's a transfer, there's a fee."
The journalist documents a pattern that repeats across multiple establishments: cafes without Internet connections, stores with inoperative point-of-sale terminals, transportation services requesting cash "to avoid problems," and businesses that charge an additional 10% fee for electronic payments. "This is not a minor detail or an isolated exception," he writes. "It is a practice that, although not always openly acknowledged, has become integrated into daily life with alarming normality."
What makes the article particularly significant is its source: it does not come from an independent media outlet or the opposition, but from the regime's own media apparatus. The fact that Cubadebate publishes this description amounts to an institutional confession of the disaster that the policy itself has created.
The Cuban government launched the banking initiative in August 2023 with an ambitious regulatory framework: Resolution 111/2023 from the Central Bank of Cuba required all economic actors to accept electronic payments; Resolution 245/2023 from the Ministry of Finance mandated tax bank accounts for individual taxpayers; and Resolution 93/2023 from the Ministry of Domestic Trade reinforced the requirement to offer digital payment channels. To enforce these regulations, the government closed 476 establishments in April 2024 after more than 8,000 inspections, and another 58 businesses in September of that same year.
Despite the coercive measures, the reality did not change. Private businesses reject transfers because their own suppliers do not accept them either, forcing them to operate in cash. This is compounded by power outages that disable payment terminals, lack of connectivity, and the collapse of ATMs. In some provinces, transfer surcharges reached as high as 20%, charged through intermediaries who provide cash in exchange for digital payments.
Reinaldo Figueredo states bluntly: "Cash remains the undisputed king of daily economics," and acknowledges that "the coherence between what the regulatory framework stipulates and what actually happens is still not perceived as solid." The result, he writes, is that "the citizen ends up carrying cash 'just in case,' even though the official discourse has told them for months that they should no longer rely on it."
The article from Cubadebate is not an isolated incident. Just two days prior, another piece from the same outlet highlighted how private businesses view digital payments as a disaster, and a state broadcaster had publicly uncovered the chaos of digital payments in Cuba. The regime's press, in summary, is describing the failure of a policy that the regime itself designed, imposed, and defended for almost three years.
"The situation of a country that strongly promotes the digitalization of payments, but that in daily life still largely depends on cash," concludes Figueredo Reinaldo. "The situation of a regulation that progresses on paper, but fades away in the streets."
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