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First Cit­i­zens’ de­ci­sion to cut US-dol­lar cred­it card lim­its will hurt SMEs im­me­di­ate­ly and hard, an­a­lysts and SME busi­ness­es said Fri­day, as they com­ment­ed on the most re­cent low­er­ing of US-dol­lar spend­ing lim­its by a lo­cal com­mer­cial bank.

From March 10, 2026, First Cit­i­zens’ per­son­al card­hold­ers will face re­duced US-dol­lar spend­ing lim­its. The month­ly US dol­lar lim­it on the bank’s Mas­ter­card stan­dard card de­creas­es from US$6,000 to US$2,000 and its Visa Plat­inum cus­tomers will now op­er­ate with a US$3,500 cap per billing cy­cle, down from US$8,000 in some cas­es.

The re­vi­sions ap­ply on­ly to in­ter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions, in­clud­ing on­line pur­chas­es and over­seas point-of-sale spend­ing, while TT-dol­lar lim­its re­main in­tact. Busi­ness and cor­po­rate cards are un­af­fect­ed, at least for now.