The Central Bank of Cuba (BCC) has taken a step that transforms the island’s complex relationship with digital money by granting the first ten operating licenses for a selected group of companies to use virtual assets in their international payments.
The measure was formalized through Resolution 4/2026 and was published in the Official Gazette on March 23, coming after years of theoretical closeness with digital assets that did not end up landing in business practice.
The timing chosen for this opening is striking, as Cuba regulated virtual assets in 2021 and threatened to implement them in 2022, but kept these tools in operational limbo for almost five years.
The fact that you are licenses arrive precisely now suggests that economic urgency finally overcomes bureaucratic caution. The island suffers from a chronic shortage of foreign currency that strangles its import capacity and this forces the State to look for escape valves outside the traditional banking system.
The list of authorized entities reflects the new architecture of the Cuban economy, where nine of the ten entities are private micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Among them are names such as Ingenius Tecnologías, Dofleini, La Calesa Real and Pasarela Digital, while only one responds to the mixed capital model under the signature of the health products manufacturer Prosa.
Use of cryptocurrencies under strict surveillance
For these companies, the authorization does not represent a blank check, since the regulations require that cross-border payments be directly linked to their corporate purpose.
Under this logic, a software development entity can use cryptocurrencies to pay for external servers, but financial speculation is prohibited. Besides, are required to operate exclusively through already licensed supplierslike the Lithuanian firm EBIORO UAB that obtained its permission intermediation at the beginning of 2025.
It is noteworthy that that permit to the Lithuanian firm authorized the foreign entity to offer the technical platform, but did not authorize Cuban companies to use it in commercial transactions. With the new resolution, the scenario changes radically, since the BCC now grants the use permit to these ten specific entities that will be able to contract said services to move capital abroad.
The Central Bank has designed a monitored scheme where licenses They have an initial validity of just one year and are subject to quarterly reports detailed. In the event that a company does not accurately report which asset it used, the amount or the supplier used, the license will be revoked immediately.
This institutional zeal responds to a complex reality because, by adopting cryptoassets, Cuba gains agility to jump over financial obstacles, but it is also exposed to the volatility of the digital market. For this reason, the BCC Cryptoasset Group highlights that these proposals were approved under a strict criterion of socioeconomic interest.
After years of conceptual flirtation with the digital code, the Cuban State decides to take action through a controlled experiment that seeks oxygen now that the North American dollar arrives much less than before.
While the State establishes this rigid framework, At street level the population has learned to overcome the limitations through the creation of sovereign ecosystems. As reported by CriptoNoticias, communities like Cuba Bitcoin have developed tools to resist twenty-hour blackouts and salaries that barely touch twenty dollars.