Jeremy McLaughlin is an associate in the firm’s San Francisco office and a member of the Consumer Financial Services group. His practice focuses on regulatory compliance and enforcement for Fintech and consumer financial products and services, with particular attention on emerging payments, payment systems, and prepaid products.

Mr. McLaughlin represents a broad range of clients across the financial services industry, ranging from startups to some of the world’s largest financial institutions. They have included money services businesses, payment system providers, banks, retailers, marketplace lenders, Fintech companies (including blockchain technology companies), crypto/virtual currency providers, credit and prepaid card companies, and mortgage lenders and servicers.

Mr. McLaughlin counsels clients on compliance with state and federal consumer protection laws, money transmitter laws, international remittances, anti-money laundering laws, abandoned property laws, and network rules, as well as advising on privacy, data security, and credit and licensed lending laws. He assists clients with negotiating and drafting agreements involving payment technologies and licensing issues, drafting terms and conditions and disclosures for new products, and structuring business operations to maximize efficiency and comply with legal obligations. He also serves as regulatory counsel in connection with investments, including conducting due diligences of payments, credit, and mortgage companies.

Mr. McLaughlin also maintains an appeals and issues practice, handling appeals and dispositive motions before state and federal courts, including proceedings involving consumer financial laws. He has prepared over 10 briefs for the US Supreme Court, and dozens of briefs for a variety of federal and state appellate courts. He has argued before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mr. McLaughlin is a regular contributor to the FinTech Law Blog and the Consumer Financial Services Watch Blog.

Greg Blase advises clients on the development of integrated solutions for risk mitigation in industries that have consumer-facing business operations. He counsels companies to identify regulatory and litigation risk and to advise in-house legal departments and management on best practices for responding to that risk. Mr. Blase’s clients include leading companies in the financial services, energy, media and telecommunications, manufacturing, and consumer products industries. Mr. Blase provides regulatory-compliance advice and policy and procedure review. He oversees audits and internal investigations and responds to government investigations. Mr. Blase defends complex litigation including class actions. He takes a holistic approach to addressing legal risk, recognizing the importance of bringing stakeholders together to solve problems collectively.

Greg Smith is a Managing Director at FT Partners and has over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry. Prior to joining FT Partners, Greg spent the majority of his career as an award-winning equity research analyst at Merrill Lynch, J.P Morgan and other firms covering companies across the financial services and FinTech landscape. Throughout his career, Greg has played a senior role in numerous investment banking transactions spanning financings, M&A and IPOs. Greg has long been a thought leader in FinTech and has frequently been quoted in the press and appeared often on CNBC and Bloomberg TV.

Pete Donat is Founder of Commerce Technology Partners, a consultancy advising Banking and FinTech clients in growth, M&A, partnership, expansion, litigation and regulatory issues. He is also a part time Head of Partnerships at Earnest Research, a data and analytics firm focused on monetizing payment industry data. He was SVP of New Ventures and Business Development at First Data from 2013 to 2017, with responsibility for establishing and managing the company's most disruptive partnerships - such as enablement of ApplePay, partnership with PayPal and dozens of investments, acquisitions and partnerships with early stage FinTech startups. Prior roles at First Data, included roles in Network Innovation, eCommerce and chair of First Data's Durbin and Regulatory response teams. Prior to FDC, he was VP of Corporate Strategy at Visa. Earlier, he held a variety of senior management roles at MasterCard, including leadership roles in Product Management, Change Management, e-Business Development, and Corporate Strategy. He has served as Board Advisor to several payment and security startups. He and his wife have real world small business experience operating one of Silicon Valley's leading Fitness Studios.

Daniel Chatelain is a serial entrepreneur focused on innovation in payments, commerce and Fintech. He sits on the board of directors or advisors of emerging companies and is a mentor at 500 Startups. He started The BayPay Forum to help foster innovation in payment and commerce.

The BayPay Forum is a member based organization that gathers today over 14,000 executives from thousands of companies and that organizes events for its members to understand the new trends in innovation in payments and commerce in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Toronto, New York, Paris, London and Luxembourg. Prior to that, Daniel was CEO, President & COO of companies he started as an entrepreneur or within the Lagardere (Elle, Woman’s Day, Car & Driver, Hachette, Canal Satellite) and Airbus Industries group (Airbus, Ariane, Eurocopter) and Vice President of a VC backed companies giving him a wide experience of growing companies domestically and internationally in the banking, telecom and interactive media industries as an entrepreneur, corporate or VC backed senior executive.