Visa

Before the 5 June 2026 OFAC deadline, Visa stopped processing Cuban-issued payment cards. No order went to Visa directly: the correspondent banks that cleared its Cuban transactions withdrew from exposure to GAESA, the Cuban military's business conglomerate, and without them the network had no route to settle.

Fincimex, a GAESA subsidiary, had linked domestic Cuban cards to the international networks and served as the single chokepoint. Once the clearing route closed in early June, card payments by visitors and by Cuban households both stopped, pushing the island's payments towards cash. For Visa, the market closed through its banking partners without any instruction to the network itself.

Cuba's national assembly passed a 176-measure economic Reform on 18 June 2026. Among its financial measures, private corporate banks are authorised under central-bank supervision, and private banking answers the loss of the Visa and Mastercard rails.

The package also allows dollar accounts without forced peso conversion, licenses Transfermovil as a non-bank financial institution and authorises last-mile agents for diaspora remittances. That ends the monopoly GAESA had held on remittance flows since Visa's card rails went dark in early June. None of the new routes runs over Visa's network.