Cuba at the Remittance and Export Size of the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Mexico
Cuba’s private sector moves about $3 to $4 billion a year across its borders. Give Cuba its neighbors’ economies and that becomes $69 billion to $415 billion.
Tim Parsa · Co-Founder & CCO, QvaPay · 26 September 2026 · 5 min read Subscribe
Cuba’s private money moves across the border through a pinhole. Between $1.1 and $2 billion a year arrives as remittances (2024; estimates vary), most of it informal, and the private sector imported more than $2 billion in 2025. Call it $3 to $4 billion a year, both ways. QvaPay’s share is still small.
Now picture the pinhole opening. We took three neighbors, measured how much money crosses their borders per person, and applied it to Cuba’s 9.43 million people.
The method
Money in: exports of goods and services, remittances received, and foreign direct investment. Money out: imports of goods and services and remittances sent. Latest full year for each economy, from its central bank or statistics office. Today’s $3 to $4 billion counts Cuba’s private sector only; the scenarios picture an open Cuba where, as in its neighbors, most of this money is private.
| If Cuba moved like | That country’s own total, in / out | Per person, in / out | Cuba at that rate, money in | Cuba at that rate, money out | Cuba at that rate, both ways |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dominican Republic | $47B / $36B | $4,154 / $3,115 | $39B | $29B | $69B |
| Mexico | $832B / $741B | $6,351 / $5,658 | $60B | $53B | $113B |
Scenarios, not forecasts, 2025 figures. Each country’s own total is its per-person figure times its population (about 11.4 million in the Dominican Republic, a 2025 estimate; 131 million in Mexico); the Cuba columns apply the same per-person rate to Cuba’s 9.43 million people. Puerto Rico ($22,214 / $21,765 per person, fiscal 2024) is left out of the table: it is inside the U.S. dollar and banking system.
Three Cubas
- The Dominican Republic. Not a rich country. Tourism, free zones, remittances from New York and Miami, steady foreign investment. Cuba has the beaches, the diaspora, and an educated workforce. At DR’s rate, about $69 billion a year moves both ways.
- Mexico. A manufacturing economy wired into U.S. supply chains, with the world’s second-largest remittance inflow. At Mexico’s rate, about $113 billion.
- Puerto Rico. Inside the U.S. economy: U.S. law, U.S. dollar, U.S. banks, factories that ship to the mainland. That’s why it comes out on top, at about $415 billion: the ceiling for a Cuba fully integrated with the United States.
It won’t all be remittances
Today most private dollars reach Cuba as family remittances. In an open Cuba most won’t. In comes financing for private businesses, capital for founders, and payments for what Cubans sell: software, design, services, rum, tobacco, nickel. Out go payments for U.S. technology installed in Cuba, imports for private stores and factories, and the wages American founders and workers in Cuba send home to their families in the United States.
Every one of those flows will need a dollar rail with U.S. compliance at both ends, as U.S. law opens them. That’s the business we’re building.
I lived in Mexico City in 2000, building Todito Cash so Mexicans could pay online in pesos. Mexico’s money flows then were a fraction of today’s. Open borders, U.S. supply chains, and the diaspora grew them. Cuba can run the same play, decades late, and right next door.
Every flow QvaPay runs is a slice of these totals; the scenarios show how far each can grow if Cuba opens like its neighbors.
| Flow | How we grow it | U.S. tech meets Cuban talent |
|---|---|---|
| Remittances Permitted · 31 CFR §515.570 (U.S. senders) | Marketing by use case to the diaspora in Miami and beyond; every sender and recipient screened. | Diaspora dollars become working capital for families and the private businesses they start. |
| Pay independent contractors Permitted for U.S. payers · §515.582, §515.340(b); not employment | Sign U.S. companies that contract independent Cuban developers and studios; one onboarding per client. | U.S. companies contract independent Cuban engineers and designers and pay each invoice in dollars. |
| MIPYME business accounts QvaPay's position · pending with OFAC (Case CU-2025-1426925-1) | MIPYME accounts marketed by use case, supported from our Miami HQ; financing for Cuban buyers once OFAC clarifies it. | Cuban entrepreneurs buy U.S. equipment and software and run their companies in dollars. |
| U.S. exports through Florida Export allowed (§515.533) · payment from a Cuban balance: QvaPay's reading, pending with OFAC | A logistics hub in Florida, close to the U.S. manufacturers and distributors we pay. | U.S. makers and distributors sell to Cuban workshops, farms, and clinics, U.S.-made goods first. |
| P2P forex Pending with OFAC · no authorization asserted | SkyMind matches orders and more screened traders join. | Every trader is a small business: Cubans earn a spread connecting dollars and pesos. |
The potential. Remittances into Cuba run an estimated $1.1–2B a year (2024; estimates vary). At the Dominican Republic’s rate per person, Cuba would receive about $9.8B, five to nine times today. That is the market QvaPay is built to serve.
| Market | Cuba today | Cuba at the Dominican Republic’s rate per person |
|---|---|---|
| Remittances received | $1.1–2B 2024 est., estimates vary | $9.8B DR total $11.9B (2025) |
A scenario, not a forecast. The Dominican Republic received $11.9B in remittances in 2025 across 11.4 million people, about $1,040 a person; at that rate Cuba’s 9.43 million people would receive about $9.8B a year, five to nine times today. Method and sources.
The United States is the only power that can realistically finance and sponsor Cuba’s recovery, which makes engagement, not isolation, Cuba’s only option. On cubanew.com ↗
Sources
- EFE/Swissinfo, ONEI: Cuba's population at end-2025 and 2025 emigration ↗
- Diario de Cuba, column citing Ministry of Economy export figures for 2023 ↗
- OnCubaNews, Cuba's 2023 foreign trade (ONEI yearbook) ↗
- Diario de Cuba, Cuba Siglo 21 on GAESA and the MIPYMES (cites the 43% fall in 2024 remittances) ↗
- Banco Central de la República Dominicana, preliminary results of the Dominican economy, January–December 2025 ↗
- Banco Central de la República Dominicana, remittances 2025: US$11,866.3 million ↗
- Banco Central de la República Dominicana, foreign direct investment 2025: US$5,032.3 million ↗
- Diario Libre, 2022 national census: 10,760,028 people ↗
- Banco de México, balance of payments 2025 ↗
- Banco de México, remittances, December 2025 ↗
- Secretaría de Economía, foreign direct investment 2025: US$40,871 million ↗
- INEGI, Encuesta Intercensal 2025 ↗
- Junta de Planificación de Puerto Rico, Balanza de Pagos 2024 ↗
- Instituto de Estadísticas de Puerto Rico, 2025 resident population estimate ↗
- Periódico Cubano, Cuba’s private sector imported nearly $1.2 billion in the first half of 2025 ↗
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