A Cuban woman posted a video on Facebook this Monday that summarizes with one sentence the financial trap that suffocates millions of people on the island: she found a street vendor selling detergent and soap who accepted bank transfers, but a technical failure in the vendor's account prevented the transaction from being completed.
"The salary of one is on a card, and what one is going to buy is like this, so one can manage it. It's not easy," says the woman in the 58-second clip, posted on the "Mi mundo" page, which gathered nearly 6,000 views in just a few hours.
The testimony outlines the vicious cycle that the Cuban regime has created with its policy of mandatory banking: the State deposits salaries and pensions onto cards, but banks face a serious shortage of cash to handle withdrawals, and sellers cannot consistently receive transfers because the system frequently malfunctions, preventing the completion of numerous transactions.
"Whenever someone appears to address our needs, because here our need is the salary that can't be extracted from one peso on the card. When someone who can resolve the situation comes along, that's when the problem arises. Something always happens," the woman laments in the video.
The case is not isolated. In Matanzas, workers have to beg merchants to accept their transfers, and some establishments impose surcharges ranging from 10% to 30% for digital payments or only accept amounts from 1,000 to 2,000 pesos.
In Santiago de Cuba, converting a transfer to cash can cost up to a 50% commission. In Morón, citizens pay 500 pesos to a middleman just to get an appointment and collect their salary. In Santa Clara, accessing 40% of the salary in cash can take three days.
The banking crisis has structural roots. The Metropolitan Bank of Havana reduced the withdrawal limit from 5,000 to 3,000 pesos per transaction in June 2026, and more than 50% of the ATMs in the capital were not operational in May of that same year.
On a national level, only 3.77% of transactions are digital, despite the fact that Resolution 111/2023 from the Central Bank requires all small and medium-sized enterprises to accept transfers under the threat of fines of up to 60,000 pesos and closure of the business. More than 475 establishments have been shut down for non-compliance with the regulation.
The average state salary is around 6,649 pesos per month, about 12 dollars, according to an informal rate of 550 CUP per dollar, while economists estimate that a family needs more than 50,000 pesos a month to cover basic expenses. The informal dollar reached a record of 550 pesos per unit in 2026.
The case of the Cuban woman in the video is added to a growing number of complaints appearing on social media. On July 7, Liss Karla La Loba, from San Antonio de los Baños, garnered over 116,000 views as she reported that the bank only allows her to withdraw 500 pesos once a week, which is not enough to care for her sick mother who relies on morphine.
The official newspaper Venceremos acknowledged on July 3, 2026, that the banking crisis has shifted from being a "banking problem" to a "social problem," an admission that comes too late for those who have been staring at a number on a screen for months that they cannot convert into food or soap.
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