The Durbin Amendment

On November 6, 2013, PYMNTS.com will present a conference in Washington, D.C. “The Durbin Amendment and the Regulation of the Debit Card Industry” where thought leaders from all sides of this debate will come together.

The debit card industry is in turmoil over regulations again. The Federal Reserve Board’s regulation of debit card interchange fees and routing went into effect on October 1, 2011 after a roughly year-long rule making process. But a few weeks ago a U.S. district court judge ruled that the Fed hade made serious errors—basically ignoring what Congress intended, favoring banks, and harming merchants. Depending on what happens on appeal interchange fee rates could plummet, or not, and banks could be forced to offer more routing alternatives on debit cards, or not. A wild card is whether Congress will step in or leave it to the courts to sort it out.

Our speaker faculty will address these complex issues including, National Retail Federation General Counsel, Mallory Duncan, who led the successful effort to persuade the district court to overturn the Fed’s rules; Dr. David S. Evans who has written extensively on interchange fee regulation and authored several submissions to the Federal Reserve Board during its rule making; lawyer Douglas Kantor who has represented the merchants in their assault on interchange fees; and NYU Professor of Law, Richard Epstein, one of the country’s top legal scholars who worked on a constitutional challenge to the Durbin Amendment.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER FACULTY

Tim Attinger
Strategy, Corporate Development and Digital Innovation,
Blackhawk Network

David Balto
Founder,
The Law Offices of David Balto

Thomas Brown
Partner, Litigation Department,
Paul Hastings

Bob Chakravorti
Managing Director & Chief Economist,
The Clearing House

Gloria Colgan
Managing Director,
Market Platform Dynamics

Mallory Duncan
SVP & General Counsel
National Retail Federation

Richard Epstein
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law
New York University School of Law

David Evans
Chairman,
Global Economics Group

Douglas Kantor
Partner
Steptoe & Johnson

Robert Litan
Director of Research,
Bloomberg Government

Reed Luhtanen
Sr. Director Payments Strategy,
Walmart

Alex Miller
Senior Associate General Counsel,
Visa

Paul Purcell
Partner,
Continental Advisors

Scott Schuh
Director & Economist- Consumer Payments Research,
Boston Federal Reserve Bank

Karen Webster
CEO,
Market Platform Dynamics

Margaret Weichert
National Lead Payments,
EY Advisory

Todd Zywicki
University Foundation Professor of Law,
George Mason University of Law

VENUE & PROGRAM TIMING
This full, one-day conference will be held at The National Press Club, 529 14th Street NW, 13th floor and will fun from  9am-5pm.