MasterCard Removes Block on Cuba Transactions for U.S.-Issued Cards
 

Today, MasterCard announced it is removing the current block on U.S.-issued card transactions in Cuba as of March 1, 2015.

The rest of their press release is here.

Now they just need more places to accept them !!

This is great! I hope Visa follows suit soon though - my best travel cards are all Visa.

Has anyone reported any success of using a US issued MC working in Cuba?

I'm heading to Cuba this week, I'll let you know if MC is working.

Awesome! I don't go until Memorial Day, but I'm hopeful to at least have the ability to use my cc should I need o (I understand few places actually accept cards)... Enjoy your trip!

Visa will go live June 1.

There's more to the issue than MC and Visa lifting the restriction on use of U.S. cards. The financial institution issuing the card also has to lift the restriction, and you also need to check with them, because not all have.

Do you know which institutions have lifted the restrictions? Any of the prime cards (Citi, Barclay, Chase, Cap 1, USBank, etc)?

No. I don't know. The advice from MasterCard (now) and Visa (for after June 1) is to check with your financial institution to see if it is set up to handle transactions in Cuba. Not all are or will be.

Pardon me for being dense, but isn't the point of a card association to handle all the back-office stuff so that the card transaction goes through?

Why would an individual credit card issuer have to set things up on its own?

This just seems really odd.

I agree. One would think that, yes. But every article, every press release about the subject, including the link in the OP, states this caveat. I'm just back from Cuba. My MC worked. I talked to other U.S. travelers and heard mixed stories.

Yes, it appears that YMMV - and sometimes does. Canadian bank CCs seem to work fine in Cuba. I checked with my Credit Union and they assured me that my ATM will work - in spite of reading to the contrary.

For what its worth, today April 4, 2015, I called the three institutions with which I have Mastercard accounts: Citi, Barclay and Capital One.

Citi and Barclay told me that they do not yet authorize Mastercard transactions in Cuba. Capital One said that they are now authorizing such transactions.

Are you sure about Capital One? I called Barclays in February and they said it would work but in March they said no, not yet.

I might have to get a Cap One Venture card after all.

Each representative at at each of the three institutions that I spoke to were not able to answer the question immediately. All three had to put me on hold while they spoke to superiors. Both Barclays and Citi representatives indicated that while they were aware of MC's announcement that it was unblocking Cuban transactions, they did not know when they themselves were going to do so. The Capital One representative indicated, after checking, that as of March 1st they were in fact authorizing Cuban transactions.

I was most surprised that Barclays has not yet unblocked their MC transactions given that of the the three, it seems like it has a greater international presence than Citi and Capital One.