Canadian credit card holders are now limited to purchasing any merchandise while vacationing in Cuba. And it’s all because Regina-based CUETS Financial Ltd., the largest provider of MasterCards to Canadian credit unions, was sold to the Bank of America last October. The North Carolina–based bank processes client purchases south of the 49th parallel, so it is governed by U.S. law prohibiting transactions from Cuba and other sanctioned countries, such as Iran, North Korea and Sudan. This is a significant problem for Canadians and specifically for mastercard holders because they must find other means of completing their desired transaction.

Visa ranks as number one in the world as well as in Canada as the credit card most used, while Mastcard is a distant second in terms of market share. Mastercard’s share will be further decreased in Canada because of the fact that Cuba is Canada’s second most likely vacation destination spot, just behind Cuba. Betty Riess, a spokesperson for the Bank of America, won’t speculate on how Fidel Castro’s mid-February resignation might impact the use of CUETS-issued MasterCards in Cuba in the future. And she says that CUETS doesn’t release how many credit card holders it has in Canada. (In fact, more than five million Canadians belong to a credit union.

As a result Visa directly benefits from this as it is issued in Canada through a intermediary Canadian credit union.

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