Authorities in Cuba call for workers in the non-state sector (private, individuals) to use electronic payment channels more.
The Vice Minister of Communications, Ernesto Rodríguez Hernández, recently stated that although “in the last five years the use of magnetic cards to carry out electronic operations has increased, it is still very limited in some sectors, such as non-state sectors, for example.” “The necessary levels have not been reached,” he said at the Round Table.
Previously, banking sources in the province of Sancti Spíritus alleged that one of the problems of cash shortages in ATMs had to do with “the high volumes of withdrawals by particular segments such as MSMEs, self-employed workers, fundamentally.”
Likewise, they assured that many private initiatives do not accept electronic means of payment in their services, “because they fear control over their finances, since that money would go to their operating account and they would have to pay taxes there.”
It was even emphasized that “the idea is not to grow more in cashiersbut in operations through payment channels”, and warned of a possible limitation in the extraction of cash from MSMEs.
“Businesses have little confidence in the catwalks for something simple: you play with the people’s money. When going to request an amount there is no money and if there is, you have to justify it. It is not the treasury or fear, but the obstacles they put up,” a Cuban opined on the subject.
PAYMENTS IN CUBA
According to official data, in Cuba there are two national payment gateways, Transfermóvil, with more than 4 million customers and Enzona with more than 600,000.
“The penetration of mobile telephony reaches 7.8 million Cubans with a mobile phone and 6.6 million access the Internet through the phone,” they reported on the television space.
The Vice Minister of Domestic Trade assured that the deployment of electronic channels is at 82% in the Commerce network and at 64% in warehouses. “In the event that they do not allow you to make the payment through electronic channels, you have every right as a consumer to demand that form of payment,” they responded from the MICIN to a reader of Cubadebate.
