Overview
- Cuba's central bank said a foreign bank that processed Visa and Mastercard transactions for the island cut its relationship with Fincimex, and card payments will be suspended starting Saturday, June 6.
- The bank at the center of the cutoff was not named and Fincimex is the financial arm of GAESA, the military-linked conglomerate targeted by recent U.S. sanctions.
- With Visa and Mastercard offline, Cuba will limit foreign-currency payments to cash, national prepaid cards or non-U.S. systems such as Russia's Mir and China's UnionPay.
- U.S. Treasury measures escalated further on Thursday when the United States added President Miguel Díaz‑Canel and several family members to sanctions lists, a step that has driven more firms to leave the island.
- The U.S. use of secondary sanctions to threaten foreign banks and companies helps explain the corporate exodus and raises the odds of deeper import stoppages, worsening power outages, shrinking tourism and growing humanitarian risk for ordinary Cubans.