Starting this Tuesday, August 15, Cuban banks will give their customers a 6% discount for using electronic means of payment, although the incentive will be fleeting, initially until the 30th of this month. The vice president of the Central Bank of Cuba, Alberto Quiñones, announced the measure this Monday in statements to Cuban Television and assured that the benefit will be regardless of the product or service that is purchased and in any business, whether state or private, the only condition is the use of a card or payment gateway.
The measure is part of the package prepared by the BCC to “encourage” the use of alternative means of payment to cash, within the “banking” program approved on August 1 and in force since last the 3rd.
Quiñones valued in his television intervention the problems in bank branches, a situation that he described as “critical”, since customers spend between two and three hours queuing
Quiñones valued in his television intervention the problems in bank branches, a situation that he described as “critical”, since clients spend between two and three hours queuing. The official denied that the delay is related to “banking” and assured that, on the contrary, the new government plan tries to correct the situation to prioritize telematic channels.
The delay is caused by cash withdrawals and not deposits, he said, confirming what citizens know. Many of them have spent months denouncing the problems in obtaining their pensions and salaries due to the lack of cash that affects the country, one of the many consequences of year-on-year inflation – which exceeds 45% only according to official data and without taking the market into account. informal sector, which dominates the national economy– and the devaluation of the peso, whose value has fallen against the dollar by at least 70% since January 2022.
As a result of this situation, the Cuban government made the decision to “bank” the economy, in addition to imposing limits on money withdrawals. “Those limits will disappear to the extent of a better situation in the country with cash,” Quiñones declared yesterday to the official journalist Lázaro Manuel Alonso.
Last Thursday, Julio Antonio Pérez Álvarez, general director of Operations and Payment Systems of the BCC attended the television program Mesa Redonda to delve into the measures of the “banking” plan that Quiñones and his superior, the president of the BCC, had already explained. Joaquin Alonso. In the broadcast, the official assured that “the training process at the level of banking structures has already concluded”, although in the streets and in the offices themselves the confusion was evident.
However, this Monday Pérez Álvarez himself announced to the Cuban News Agency that “a general training program aimed at workers in the sector, the population and economic actors” had begun to comply with “the gradual and gradual implementation of banking transactions in the country”.
Within this plan, which had allegedly ended a week ago, there are “conferences, workshops, forums, seminars and other financial orientation and education actions” and will affect all institutions, governments at any level and political and mass organizations.
Within this plan, which had allegedly ended a week ago, there are “conferences, workshops, forum debates, seminars and other financial guidance and education actions”
With them, he said, “it is intended to achieve general awareness about bankarization.”
Although the Government has insisted that the use of electronic means of payment is not mandatory, what will be imperative is that businesses of any type of management have the means so that it is the customer who chooses. For this, there will be a period of six months in which employers implement the measures to guarantee subscriptions with gateways or cards, those who do not adapt to the measure being penalized with the suspension of the license, as suggested by the norm, and they said, forceful, the authorities of the Ministry of Domestic Trade.
Days later, the directors of the BCC called for calm and affirmed that there will be exempt sectors, at least initially, such as fishermen and farmers, because they lack the necessary infrastructure. “It would be irrational to undertake these actions,” said Pérez Álvarez. Some words interpreted by some economists as a freezing of the imminence of some measures that have altered the summer of the population.
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