Cuban Regime Seizes Control of E-Commerce Foreign Currency with New Law

On February 25, 2026, the Cuban Council of Ministers officially announced Agreement 10216 in the Official Gazette. This new regulation targets all e-commerce platforms operating with foreign currency payments from abroad. Although this measure was adopted on August 27, 2025, the regime strategically delayed its public release for six months, indicating a calculated political maneuver.

For many entrepreneurs, this agreement represents a desperate attempt by the government to undermine small and medium-sized enterprises, just as the private sector had become a vital lifeline amid Cuba's economic turmoil.

E-commerce platforms such as SuperMarket23, Cuballama, Cubamax, DimeCuba, Cubatel Market, MallHabana, EnviosCuba, CompreMarket, and over a dozen similar stores that enable the Cuban diaspora to send essentials like food and medicine to their families on the island now face a direct threat from this regulatory framework.

The True Intent Behind Agreement 10216

Beneath the bureaucratic language lies a clear objective: seize the foreign currency flowing through e-commerce channels, which currently operate beyond the Cuban government's grasp.

The agreement empowers the Central Bank of Cuba to determine who can receive external payments, effectively granting the regime control over which platforms can operate. It mandates that all platforms register with state entities, undergo comprehensive fiscal supervision, and align their systems with the Ministry of Communications. However, the most telling requirement is that income from e-commerce must be "prioritized towards accounts in Cuban banks." In essence, the dictatorship wants every dollar spent by the diaspora on feeding their families to be funneled through its control.

Moreover, the agreement outright bans the sale of goods to foreign entities for resale to beneficiaries in Cuba, directly attacking the business model of most platforms operating outside the island, which is precisely where the Cuban exile community's consumer trust lies.

Additionally, taxes must be paid in foreign currency, not in devalued Cuban pesos. The regime seeks its share in dollars, not in the national currency.

Dispelling Myths About State-Controlled Online Stores

For years, there have been rumors claiming these platforms are state-run or fronts for government operatives. This agreement dismantles that narrative entirely.

If these stores were state-owned or controlled, such regulation would be unnecessary. They wouldn't need to register with multiple government bodies, open their books to tax authorities, or comply with cybersecurity regulations from the Ministry of the Interior. They would already be integrated into the state apparatus.

Agreement 10216 highlights the regime's frustration with significant foreign currency flows bypassing its control, which it finds intolerable.

The Legal Dilemma: Compliance May Breach U.S. Law

Agreement 10216 introduces a legal contradiction that could render it ineffective for U.S.-based platforms—the majority of operators.

U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) regulations prohibit any person or company under U.S. jurisdiction from conducting financial transactions that benefit the Cuban government, its military, or related entities. GAESA, CIMEX, and FINCIMEX—the military conglomerate controlling much of Cuba's economy—are on the State Department's restricted entities list, reinstated by the Trump administration in January 2025 with 237 entities. The Central Bank of Cuba is, by definition, a government institution.

The context makes this contradiction even more pronounced. Since regaining power, the Trump administration has significantly tightened sanctions against Cuba: the island was redesignated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, the NSPM-5 presidential memorandum expanding restrictions on military and government entities was reissued, and in January 2026, a national emergency concerning Cuba was declared through Executive Order 14380. Washington is exerting maximum pressure on the Cuban regime.

Under these circumstances, what Agreement 10216 demands—directing e-commerce revenue to the Cuban state banking system and seeking Central Bank authorization—could directly violate U.S. sanctions. OFAC non-compliance penalties are severe: up to 10 years of imprisonment, fines of up to $1 million for companies, and $250,000 for individuals.

U.S. policy has been consistent on one point, under both Democratic and Republican administrations: authorized transactions must benefit the independent Cuban private sector, not the state apparatus. Agreement 10216 aims to achieve the opposite.

The problem extends beyond trade sanctions. The agreement requires platforms to provide the Cuban tax administration with "informative, access, and supervisory mechanisms" for their operations and to comply with cybersecurity regulations dictated by the Ministry of the Interior—the MININT, the regime's repressive apparatus. In practice, this means handing over financial transaction data, personal information of U.S. customers (names, addresses, purchase amounts), and access to platforms' internal systems to a state designated as a Sponsor of Terrorism. For a Miami-based company, this could violate not only OFAC regulations but also federal and state data protection and consumer privacy laws, including Florida's privacy legislation.

In reality, the regime is asking companies with accounts in U.S. banks and customers paying with Visa and Mastercard to channel money into the Cuban state coffers and hand over their databases. Complying with Havana would mean breaking the law in Washington. Platforms would be forced to choose between submitting to the dictatorship and facing federal sanctions, or ignoring the agreement and risking losing the ability to operate within Cuba.

Potential Breaches of Third-Country Laws

The implementation of Agreement 10216 could also conflict with the legislation of other countries. Several e-commerce platforms serving the Cuban diaspora operate from Europe—particularly Spain—and have users in multiple jurisdictions. For these companies, complying with Havana's demands could trigger a cascade of legal violations.

In the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) prohibits the transfer of personal data to third countries that do not ensure an adequate level of protection. Cuba lacks an adequacy decision from the European Commission—and couldn't possibly obtain one, given that the criteria require respect for the rule of law, human rights, and the existence of independent supervisory authorities. Transferring European users' data to the Cuban Ministry of the Interior or the tax administration would constitute an illegal data transfer under the GDPR, with fines reaching up to 20 million euros or 4% of the company's global turnover.

The aggravating factor is that the agreement doesn't just request data from any organization: the MININT demands it through its cybersecurity regulations and the regime's tax administration. Providing "informative, access, and supervisory mechanisms" to the political police of a dictatorship goes beyond a compliance issue: it directly endangers user safety. A Cuban on the island receiving shipments from abroad, an exile regularly purchasing for their family—they would all be exposed to an intelligence apparatus that persecutes and imprisons dissidents.

For platforms operating in Canada, federal privacy laws (PIPEDA) impose similar restrictions on international data transfers. In any jurisdiction with a minimal data protection framework, the Cuban demand poses the same problem: a government without guarantees of fundamental rights, without independent oversight, and with a documented history of political repression cannot be a legitimate recipient of foreign citizens' personal data.

The Regime Lost This Business Due to Incompetence

It's worth recalling how we reached this point. Foreign currency stores (the former TRD, Cimex, Panamericana) were for decades the Cuban state's monopoly to capture remittances from the diaspora. It was a lucrative business: families abroad sent dollars, and the government sold imported products with significant markups through its state chains.

However, the regime failed to maintain this business. State stores in MLC (Freely Convertible Currency) became a fiasco: empty shelves, poor-quality products, inflated prices, and deplorable service. The chronic inability of the Cuban state to manage a basic supply chain led the diaspora to seek alternatives. They found them in e-commerce platforms operated by Cuban entrepreneurs, many of them SMEs, who achieved what the state could not: offering quality products, better prices, and reliable deliveries.

Now, the dictatorship resorts to what it knows best: legislating to control, prohibit, and extract value from others' work. It wants to regain by force what it lost due to its own incompetence.

The agreement takes effect 60 days after its publication, around April 26, 2026. Those already operating will have an additional 30 days to comply with the new requirements once the Central Bank issues complementary provisions.

The big question is whether the platforms operating from abroad will submit to these demands or seek ways to continue operating outside state control.

The Desperation Behind the Law

This agreement cannot be understood in isolation. It must be seen in the context of a regime running out of economic oxygen. Subsidized oil from Venezuela—a two-decade-long lifeline for the dictatorship—has plummeted to critical levels, forcing Cuba to suspend refueling at its own airports. Tourism, another historical source of foreign currency, is in free fall: the ongoing energy crisis, insecurity, infrastructure deterioration, and travel restrictions imposed by Washington have driven visitors away. Exports are marginal. Foreign investment is nonexistent.

In this suffocating scenario, the regime turns to the only functioning foreign currency flow—the money the diaspora sends through e-commerce to feed their families—and its response is not to facilitate this ecosystem but to try to capture it. It's the reaction of a government that doesn't know how to generate wealth, only how to confiscate it.

Cuba's problem won't be solved with another agreement in the Official Gazette. As long as GAESA—the military's business conglomerate that controls tourism, imports, remittances, retail, and entire economic sectors—holds the reins of the country, there's no possible solution. GAESA is not just an economic actor: it's the mechanism by which the military elite extracts wealth from every transaction occurring in Cuba, from the hotel where a tourist sleeps to the chicken package an exile buys for their mother.

No economic reform can succeed when the same apparatus that should drive it is the main beneficiary of the system that prevents it. Any real solution for Cuba inevitably involves dismantling GAESA. Until that happens, measures like Agreement 10216 will remain what they always have been: desperate graspings of a failed dictatorship, trying to seize from the private sector the little that works in the Cuban economy.