Overview
Heena Merchant is of counsel in the Global Fintech practice at Paul Hastings and is based in the firm’s Dallas office. She represents traditional depository institutions, nonbank financial institutions, Fintech companies, payment processors, trusted platform companies, payment networks, digital asset and cryptocurrency platforms, and investment firms investing in Fintech companies.
Heena has deep experience in federal and state financial services laws and regulations, including, anti-money-laundering laws, payments laws, the Bank Secrecy Act, Regulation E, federal and state money transmission laws, digital asset regulations, gift card laws, consumer protection laws, card network rules and ACH rules.
As part of her transactional practice, Heena advises among the largest global Fintech and payments companies on their most innovative and strategic initiatives. She regularly advises on all aspects of product development and commercialization, strategic partnerships and commercial transactions in the global financial services and payments space. In particular, Heena has significant experience in the bank and nonbank/Fintech intersection, routinely advising clients on key commercial partnerships and acquisitions among such entities, including structuring strategic transactions in the space, and drafting and negotiating agreements underlying such partnerships and transactions.
Heena also routinely advises private equity, investment and venture fund clients in strategic Fintech acquisitions and capital-raising activities, and represents clients in ongoing regulatory matters before federal and state regulatory agencies.
Representations
- Visa in its $1 billion acquisition of Pismo.
- Charles Schwab on the launch of its of Schwab Crypto Platform.
- The initial launch of the Samsung Wallet in 2015 and subsequent expansion of Samsung’s payment offerings and co-brand partnerships in the U.S.
- Booking Holdings on a variety of payments initiatives including the establishment of Booking Holdings Financial Services.
- Salesforce in its partnership with Stripe to integrate Stripe’s technology into its Commerce Cloud Payments solution.
- HubSpot on structuring and ongoing payments initiatives in connection with HubSpot Commerce.
- Banc of California in its acquisition of Global Payroll Gateway's payments platform and technology, as well as the company’s wholly owned subsidiary Deepstack Technologies.
- GTCR, a leading private equity firm, in the sale of its portfolio company, Paya Holdings (NASDAQ: PAYA), to Nuvei Corporation.
- GTCR in its acquisition of Concord Servicing, a leading provider of loan servicing software and products.
- GTCR in the sale of its portfolio company, RevSpring, a leader in patient and consumer engagement and payment solutions, to Frazier Healthcare Partners.
- Integrum, an innovative investment firm focused on partnering with technology-enabled services companies, in its acquisition of MerchantE, a leading end-to-end payment platform, from Cielo, one of the world’s largest payments companies.
- Paysafe Group Holdings Limited and Skrill USA in connection with its merger with Foley Trasimene Acquisition Corp. II (NYSE: BFT), a special purpose acquisition company, pursuant to which Paysafe became a publicly traded entity.
- Coinbase on a wide variety of regulatory matters since its inception in 2013 and ongoing product launches and regulatory questions.
- Gemini since 2015 in its creation of the Gemini Dollar and the related compliance position.