MIR cards, a payment system that defies the blockade against Cuba
march 30, 2023
Author: Nuria Barbosa León |
Since March 13, Cuban banks have been accepting the MIR card, issued in Russia, which allows making cash withdrawals by converting rubles into Cuban pesos, and which favors transactions by tourists or businessmen from the Eurasian nation on the island.
This payment system defies the criminal blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba for more than six decades, because it establishes links between financial organizations of the two countries, including third parties that use these gateways.
The Russian agency Sputnik recently quoted the Russian ambassador to Havana, Andrei Guskov, who put forward these arguments and added that the implementation of this system should have a positive effect on the increase in the flow of Russian tourists to the island.
Likewise, Professor Luis René Fernández Tabío, researcher at the Center for Research on International Economy of the University of Havana, said that "it is a contribution to the balance of payments, and with it the country can import goods and services from the Eurasian nation," in addition to protecting the bilateral link from the negative impact of the blockade.
For Fernández Tabío it is also a window that contributes to break the direct and indirect effects of the economic war applied against Russia through Western sanctions, which prohibit the import and export of goods, services and technology.
The Cuban expert explained that the MIR payment system constitutes a step outside the Swift system, and could favor the incorporation of Cuba to a method of transactions at the moment it becomes generalized, either within the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) or other alternative mechanisms created to escape the predominance of the dollar and its entire system of unilateral coercive economic measures, illegal from any point of view and violators of human rights.
