Latham’s Payments Practice helps clients of all types and sizes navigate the myriad of regulatory, transactional, and general corporate issues impacting the payments sector.

Serving Clients at the Forefront of the Payments Evolution

Latham works with a diverse range of clients, including:

• Traditional financial institutions
• Payment networks and payment processors
• Established tech giants
• Emerging companies
• Telecommunications operators
• Online marketplaces
• Social networks
• Investors and acquirers

Latham’s integrated global team provides pragmatic, commercially focused advice across the range of legal and regulatory challenges associated with developing, using, operating, or expanding the geographic reach of various offerings, such as:

• Money transmission
• Digital and virtual/cryptocurrencies
• Distributed ledger technologies
• Electronic and mobile payments
• Stored value / prepaid access / e-money
• Payment instruments
• Credit products
• E-commerce

Navigating Regulatory Compliance

Latham helps clients understand their legal obligations, an often daunting task amidst increasingly stringent regulatory scrutiny in the payments sector. Latham lawyers draw on a sophisticated understanding of the federal, state, and international laws regulating the industry, as well as a practical understanding of the requirements and expectations of the various administering regulatory agencies.

Latham provides thoughtful, clear, and forward-looking counsel on:

• General compliance, including authorization and licensing requirements and processes, regulatory filing and reporting requirements, and obtaining approvals and guidance from regulatory authorities
• Development, launch, or modification of products or services
• Development of policies and procedures, terms of service, disclosures, or other aspects of an offering
• Government enforcement actions, audits, and examinations in multiple jurisdictions

Significantly, Latham also helps facilitate stakeholder feedback to authorities by keeping clients abreast of legislative and regulatory developments, and opportunities to comment in response to new trends and policies.

Providing Transactional Advice

Latham combines market-leading transactional practices with comprehensive regulatory and industry knowledge, and a keen understanding of the technology that underpins the sector to guide clients successfully through a wide range of transactional matters. In particular, Latham draws on extensive experience structuring and negotiating various commercial arrangements, including those related to the offering of new products and services, bank and network sponsorships, and agency and processing relationships.

The firm also leverages a significant track record of advising clients on payments and fintech-related M&A, joint ventures, and private equity matters. Notably, Latham has advised clients on the acquisition, sale, or investment — and related due diligence — of financial institutions and other companies in the payments sector.

Leveraging a Global Platform

Latham lawyers in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the US can leverage the firm’s global platform to efficiently advise clients on matters that may also relate to other financial regulatory areas, as well as data privacy and cybersecurity, economic sanctions and anti-money laundering, M&A, private equity, technology transactions, intellectual property and software licensing, outsourcing, e-commerce, and telecommunications technology, among others.