Valley Bank of Nevada, a Nevada Banking Corporation v. Plus System, Inc., a Delaware Membership Corporation

Plus System, Inc. (“Plus”) appeals the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Valley Bank of Nevada (“Valley”) on Plus’s claim that a Nevada statute violates the commerce clause of the United States Constitution. Under the statute, ATM networks may not prohibit a Nevada bank from charging transaction fees to an automated teller machine (ATM) cardholder who withdraws funds from the Nevada bank’s ATM but whose account is with another bank. We affirm.

FACTS

Valley is a Nevada bank with branches throughout the state. Plus is a shared automated teller machine (ATM) network, of which Valley is a founding member. In a shared ATM network, account holders can use their own bank’s ATM card to withdraw cash from another bank’s ATM (a “foreign” transaction). Banks would not be willing to permit foreign cardholder withdrawals without assurances that the cardholder’s home bank will reimburse the withdrawal. Through shared ATM networks, banks subscribe to one set of rules governing the entire membership so that the banks need not contract separately with each other for reimbursement, which would be cost prohibitive.

Under the Plus network rules, the “acquirer bank” (the bank whose ATM…