WASHINGTON — A panel of security experts told executives attending Visa's Global Security Summit Wednesday that the interchange cap mandated by the Durbin Amendment will likely leave card security efforts more muddled than before.

The panelist were almost unified on the notion that the Federal Reserve choosing and dictating card data protection technology would be a bad idea. One panelist, Aaron McPherson of IDC Financial Insights, expressed a hope that the Fed might simply dictate the use of smart card such as chip and pin.

But other panel members doubted that would happen. Nessa Feddis, senior counsel with the American Bankers Association, thought that would be a bad idea since it would be obsolete by the time the rule was finalized and, in the proposal, would give criminals a road map to where they need to develop expertise.