If you plan travelling out of the country, it is advisable you check with your bank to ensure that the amount of foreign currency you can withdraw on your debit card is still intact.
Stanbic IBTC just informed customers this afternoon 18 February that the limits on their Debit MasterCard have been cut.
Now customers with Debit MasterCard can only spend $350 a day online or on a POS machine as against the previous daily limit of $1000 a day.
Cash Withdrawal from ATMs outside the country has also been reduced by 50 per cent from $300 a day to $150 a day.
Also the total amount that can be withdrawn from any ATM abroad on a Stanbic IBTC debit Mastercard is $750 while the total amount that can be spent online and on POS in a month is now $1,750. Total cumulative monthly spend on all the two platforms is not only $2500. Other banks are also expected to announce similar cuts.
The new lower limits come as the country’s dollar reserves keep dwindling, forcing the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to implement policies aimed at slowing down the dwindling reserves. The foreign reserves have fallen to a low of $27.8 billion just enough to finance imports for a maximum of six months.
The cut in spending in limits is expected to put pressure on exchange rate of the dollar in the unofficial black market. On 18 February, dealers in the black market were selling the dollar at N390 while the UK pound sterling was selling for about N500.
Financial analysts are already projecting that the dollar may sell for as high as N500 and the UK pound even higher, if nothing happens to improve the current supply of dollar in the black market.
