Cuba’s cash crisis leaves shelter unable to spend 20-peso bills

Mileydis Suárez, who runs the animal shelter El Jardín de las Mascotas in Mayabeque, said a shop refused to take her 20-peso bills when she tried to buy liver for the animals because the business would not accept transfers. The episode turned a routine purchase into a snapshot of Cuba’s cash crisis: the smallest bills should be the easiest to spend, yet they are becoming the hardest to use.

Suárez said she needed cash donations because electronic payment systems are unreliable and because she cannot spend hours searching for a business willing to take the right kind of money. In a country where the banking push has been sold as a fix for daily transactions, low-denomination notes are increasingly treated as a problem rather than a convenience. Banks continue issuing mostly five, ten and 20-peso bills, but many shops reject them or push customers toward transfers that often fail in practice.

The legal backdrop is Resolution 111 of 2023 from the Banco Central de Cuba, published in the Gaceta Oficial on Aug. 2, 2023. The rule set banking standards for cash collection, payment, deposit, withdrawal and holding in Cuban pesos. In April 2026, the Ministry of Economy and Planning reiterated that economic actors are legally obliged to accept bank transfers, yet the rule has not matched life on the ground.

The shortage is visible well beyond one shelter in Mayabeque. In June, Granma provincial authorities said they needed more than 400 million pesos to pay more than 111,000 retirees. ATMs in Havana, Santiago de Cuba and Camagüey have run dry or stopped functioning, and some people in Camagüey and other provinces have been limited to withdrawals of just 500 pesos a month. A June 28 report from Havana said one bank had reportedly lowered the maximum withdrawal limit to 3,000 pesos.

Compliance with the banking rules remains weak. A May 2026 report said fewer than 10% of private businesses in Sancti Spíritus were following the payment rules in practice, and earlier enforcement campaigns closed hundreds of establishments for banking-rule violations. Cuba’s energy crisis has made the problem worse by knocking out ATMs, point-of-sale terminals and mobile-payment tools at the same time the state keeps pressing people to use them.

For Suárez, the refusal of a 20-peso bill was not a small inconvenience. It was another sign that even legal tender is losing its place in everyday Cuban commerce, leaving shelters, families and retirees trapped between cash that cannot be spent and transfers that cannot be trusted.