Visa and Mastercard to stop operating in Cuba on June 6

Visa and Mastercard payments in Cuba are set to stop on June 6, cutting off one of the island’s most widely used foreign-card channels and hitting travelers, hotels and Cubans with cards issued abroad first. The Central Bank of Cuba said the suspension follows notice on June 2 from the foreign bank that processes those transactions, which said it was ending its relationship with Fincimex S.A., the state-linked financial arm that handles the card flow.

For consumers on the island, the sharpest disruption will be at the point of sale and online. Any merchant charge, hotel bill, restaurant tab or internet purchase routed through Visa or Mastercard is headed for a shutdown once the deadline lands. That matters most for foreign visitors, who have leaned on internationally accepted cards to pay for rooms, meals and transport, and for Cubans whose cards were issued abroad and still depended on those networks to move money into the country.

The bank did not name the foreign processor, but the pressure around Fincimex has been building fast. Fincimex sits inside GAESA, the Cuban military conglomerate targeted by the new U.S. sanctions. Executive Order 14404 was signed by Donald Trump on May 1, and the State Department said on May 7 that it designated GAESA under that order, along with Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera and Moa Nickel S.A. OFAC has also warned that foreign financial institutions face sanctions risk for transacting with GAESA.

The result is another squeeze on a financial system already hemmed in by the U.S. embargo in place since 1962. Fincimex had already been sanctioned in 2020 over remittance-related transactions, and the latest move further narrows the channels Cuba can use to receive revenue from sales of goods and services paid for with internationally accepted cards. That is a direct blow to tourism, where foreign hotels and other operators have already been pulling back amid the broader sanctions tightening, logistics problems and supply shortages.

What still works is narrower but not gone. Cash remains in circulation, domestic prepaid cards still function, and some foreign-issued cards, including Mir and UnionPay, can still be used in parts of the island. Even so, the June 6 cutoff removes the cards most visitors reach for first, and it does so just as Cuba’s payment network is becoming harder, slower and more expensive to use.