Since last March 13, Cuban banks have accepted the Russian-issued Mir card, which allows cash withdrawals by exchanging rubles for Cuban pesos and facilitates transactions by tourists or businessmen from the Eurasian nation on the island.
This payment system challenges the criminal blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba for more than six decades, as it establishes links between financial organizations of the two countries, including third parties using these financial gateways.
The Russian agency Sputnik recently quoted the ambassador in Havana Andrei Guskov, who put forward these arguments, adding that the implementation of this system should have a positive impact on the increase in Russian tourist flows on the island, which in 2022 received more than 54,000 vacationers and 146,000 in 2021.
Professor Luis René Fernández Tabío, a researcher at the International Economic Research Center at the University of Havana, also agrees with the Russian diplomat when he emphasizes: “It is a contribution to the balance of payments and with it the country can import goods and services of the Eurasian nation”, in addition to protecting the bilateral alliance from the negative effects of the trade, economic and financial blockade that the United States has imposed on Havana for more than six decades.
For Fernández Tabío, it is also a window that will help break through the direct and indirect effects of the economic war against Russia through the sanctions imposed by the West after the start of Moscow’s special operation in Ukraine in February 2022, which ban import and Export of goods, services and technology.
The Cuban expert explains that the Mir payment system represents a step away from the Swift system and could favor Cuba’s incorporation into a transaction method if it becomes general, whether within the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) or others alternative mechanisms created to escape the dominance of the dollar and its entire system of unilateral economic coercion that is illegal in every respect and violates human rights.
The initiative can help reduce the vulnerabilities of the Cuban economy, “It always depends on what we do, but these entries in rubles make it possible to pay for everything from products such as hydrocarbons and wheat to debts without using another currency . The Cuban banking system directly recognizes Russian cards and the ruble as a convertible currency,” the Cuban researcher told Sputnik.
To date, cards from the Mir payment system launched in 2015 are accepted in Turkey, Vietnam, South Korea, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.