The Small Business Administration on Wednesday said it was temporarily closing its Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) assistance program for small businesses to all but the country's smallest lenders, in a bid to give them fair access.

This, after the first-round PPP program drew criticism for allowing larger businesses to muscle in on the program, to the exclusion of smaller ones in need.

"To ensure access to the PPP loan program for the smallest lenders and their small business customers, starting at 4 p.m. today EDT through 11:59 p.m. EDT, SBA systems will only accept loans from lending institutions with asset sizes less than $1 billion," the agency said.

Created by the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill signed by President Donald Trump in March, the PPP provides forgivable loans to small businesses facing financial hardship as a consequence of the pandemic and efforts to control the potentially lethal coronavirus' spread. 

The SBA distributed $349 billion in less than two weeks; it began handing out a second round of $310 billion in funding on Monday.

As The Hill reported, the SBA’s Wednesday decision to carve out a window for smaller firms riled some advocates for larger banks hoping to provide service for their own struggling small-business clientele.

One such advocate is Kevin Fromer, CEO of Financial Services Forum, a trade group that represents the eight biggest U.S. banking institutions. “With SBA blocking nearly 800 banks, relief for potentially thousands of small business owners and their employees will be delayed. A better solution would be a fully operational system that allows banks of all sizes to provide support to Main Street,” tweeted Fromer, who is also a former assistant secretary at the Treasury Department.

The White House and Congress are both acutely aware of criticisms over the previous PPP round, in which multiple large and publicly traded companies accepted a significant round of the funding through bigger banks, only to return it amid stinging public and administration rebukes.

Newsmax's Jeffrey Rubin contributed to this report.