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Three years after the government launched its mandatory banking policy, in August 2023, the official newspaper Venceremos from Guantánamo admitted this Friday that the cash crisis "has ceased to be a banking difficulty and has become a social problem," while emphasizing the failure of a measure that promised to modernize the Cuban economy.
The paradox described by the official media is stark: hundreds of thousands of Cubans receive their salaries on time via cards but cannot convert that into real purchasing power, as stores reject transfers, ATMs are empty, and physical cash mainly circulates through informal channels.
"Even more concerning is that the problem no longer seems to be limited to the availability of physical cash. It also reflects a crisis of confidence. Consumers doubt they will be able to use their payment methods; merchants are seeking alternative mechanisms to ensure liquidity, and the population feels that solutions continue to arrive at a pace that does not meet the demands of reality," the media emphasized.
The case of retired journalist Arturo Chang, 74 years old, is the latest example of the collapse. Recently, Chang tried to pay for 10 loaves of bread at the private business 24.7 in Santa Clara with 100 five-peso bills, money that the state bank itself had given him as a pension.
The employee rejected him with a response that summarizes the arbitrariness of the system: "This is private, and the owner can make that decision."
Chang receives a maximum pension of 3,653 Cuban pesos per month, equivalent to less than 10 dollars.
"Without coal because it was necessary to go get it, with a blackout lasting almost 24 hours, the empty refrigeration units, that bread and a can of spam were the hope for lunch," wrote in the newspaper Trabajadores.
On the same Thursday, the Credit and Commerce Bank (Bancec) of Ciego de Ávila issued a statement demanding that small and medium-sized enterprises and self-employed individuals immediately cease the rejection of five, ten, and twenty peso notes, labeling it a "flagrant violation of citizens' rights."
The citizen response was immediate: "If it's a law, there’s no need for any call to conscience. What’s appropriate is to enforce it without leniency."
The numbers confirm the structural failure. According to a survey in May, less than 10% of small and medium-sized enterprises and private workers in Sancti Spíritus accepted transfers as a common method of payment.
In Pinar del Río, only between 10% and 12% of about 700,000 monthly transactions were conducted digitally. Nationwide, just 3.77% of transactions are digital, despite more than 26,500 deficiencies detected, 15,240 fines, and 269 business closures.
In June, the citizen Freddy De León López took three days to withdraw only 40% of his salary due to ATMs being out of cash and system outages. When he finally succeeded, a private business rejected his electronic payment.
More than 50% of the ATMs in Havana were already out of service in May, and the Metropolitan Bank may have lowered the withdrawal limit to 3,000 pesos per transaction, below the legal limit of 5,000 pesos established in 2023.
The cash withdrawal "at a percentage", with fees ranging from 35% to 50%, has become normalized as the only means of liquidity. In Santiago de Cuba, the police arrested individuals in May who were charging those fees for converting transfers into cash.
The most vulnerable bear the heaviest burden. Over 1.7 million retirees receive pensions of less than 10 dollars a month, mostly lack smartphones, and line up in front of bank branches starting at five in the morning.
"Without a doubt, it is a chain in which the link that always breaks is that of the customers, especially the older ones," wrote Chang.
The regime approved on June 19 a package of 176 measures that include, for the first time since 1959, the authorization of private banking and the removal of limits on withdrawals.
But these reforms come at a time when the banking system is already functioning in collapse, and the very director of macroeconomic policies at the Central Bank admitted this in May: "If electronic payment is not easier or faster than paying in cash, of course it won't catch on."
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