Jess Cheng helps innovative companies adapt and thrive in the evolving payments space. She is a partner in the New York office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she represents clients as a member of the firm’s fintech and financial services group.

Jess advises her clients in connection with the following issues, among others:

• Crafting specialized commercial terms: Jess has significant experience helping fintech companies, digital marketplaces, neobanks, and innovative payment service providers create sophisticated legal frameworks to underpin payment services, including novel arrangements and bank partnerships, with a view to minimizing regulatory risks and incorporating industry best practices. 
• Regulatory counseling: Jess advises on the complex and evolving regulatory frameworks governing payments (such as anti-money laundering, consumer protection, and other payments laws), emerging technologies (such as artificial intelligence, blockchain-based payment infrastructures, and payment stablecoins), and related bank-regulatory matters.
• Policy advocacy: Jess counsels on legislative and regulatory developments and helps clients keep abreast of strategic opportunities to advance responsible innovation.  

Prior to joining Wilson Sonsini, Jess served as senior counsel at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, where she handled a spectrum of payment system issues, including with respect to debit card interchange and instant payment regulations, as well as policymaking with respect to digital assets, stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies. She also has extensive expertise counseling on the central bank’s innovative core instant payment infrastructure, the FedNow Service.

Prior to that, she was counsel at the International Monetary Fund, where she advised on the strategic direction of the Fund’s fintech work agenda and provided technical assistance to advance law reform in central bank legislation. Previously, she was deputy general counsel at Ripple, counsel and officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and an associate at the New York law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.