Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

December 16, 2010

Good afternoon.

The purpose of today's meeting is to consider the staff's recommendation that the Board request public comment on a proposed rule implementing Section 1075 of the Dodd-Frank Act. This provision of Dodd-Frank deals with the regulation of interchange fees on debit cards and related matters.

U.S. financial regulatory agencies have been given significant new responsibilities under Dodd-Frank. In a number of cases, the law requires the Board and other agencies to address complex and challenging issues within a short time frame. This is certainly true with respect to this particular rulemaking. Although it is important for us to act expeditiously, both to meet the requirements of the law and to establish regulatory clarity as soon as possible, the proposal today is one that deserves particularly careful attention from the Board, in light of debit cards' increasingly important role in the U.S. payments system. We have already gathered a great deal of information bearing on this rulemaking from a variety of sources and we look forward to receiving the public's comments.

I will now turn to Vice Chair Yellen, who leads the Board's Committee on Payments, Clearing, and Settlement, which reviewed the staff's proposal.