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Legal / Service Provider·Payments

Jess Cheng

Partner, Banking, Payments and Fintech at Sidley Austin LLP

New York, NY, USA

JC
LinkedIn
Why they matter

Ex-Federal Reserve payments regulator turned Sidley partner who just advised Western Union and Circle on live stablecoin launches — a rare regulator-plus-practitioner read on payments infrastructure deals.

Background

Jess Cheng is a Partner in Sidley Austin's Banking, Payments and Fintech practice in New York, having joined in March 2026 from Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. She previously served as senior counsel at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors leading modernized payments regulations, as an officer at the New York Fed, and as deputy general counsel at Ripple. She holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School and a B.A. from Yale, and is ranked in Chambers FinTech (2025, 2026) for USA FinTech Legal: Payments & Lending.

Notable deals

  • 2026
    Co-led the Sidley team advising The Western Union Company on the launch of USDPT, its Anchorage-issued, Solana-based U.S. dollar payment stablecoin integrated into Western Union's global remittance network
  • 2026
    Led the Sidley team advising Circle on the launch of Circle Payments Network (CPN) Managed Payments, a unified stablecoin settlement solution
  • 2026
    Recruited by Sidley Austin as a partner to grow its Banking, Payments and Fintech practice in New York after three years leading payments work at Wilson Sonsini

Call-prep brief

Background

  • Partner, Banking, Payments and Fintech at Sidley Austin (New York), joined March 2026 from Wilson Sonsini.
  • Prior senior counsel, Federal Reserve Board of Governors (drafted modernized payments regs, worked interagency stablecoin/digital-asset policy); also officer at NY Fed; deputy GC at Ripple.
  • J.D. Columbia Law (Columbia Law Review), B.A. Yale, magna cum laude.

Current focus

  • Stablecoin issuance and network design (Western Union's USDPT, Circle's CPN Managed Payments), bank-fintech partnerships, and Federal Reserve/payments-regulatory strategy for nonbanks entering payment rails.
  • Ranked in Chambers FinTech 2025/2026 (Payments & Lending); clients cite her regulatory depth and speed.

What she cares about

  • Getting the regulatory perimeter right before product launch — she sees stablecoin and payments deals through a former-regulator lens, not just deal execution.
  • Practical, commercially workable structures rather than maximally conservative legal positions.

Recent moves / sensitivities

  • Just relocated her book of business from Wilson Sonsini to Sidley (March 2026) — active client-transition period, so be mindful of confidentiality/non-solicit constraints from her prior firm.
  • As outside counsel on live, high-profile stablecoin launches, she'll be careful about anything resembling client-specific commentary; frame questions around regulatory trends, not deal specifics.

Questions to ask

  1. Given the Western Union and Circle launches, where do you see the Fed and OCC drawing the line next on nonbank access to payment rails?
  2. What operational or compliance red flags most often kill a stablecoin-payments deal in diligence?
  3. How are bank-fintech partnership structures evolving post-master-account precedents like Kraken's?

Outreach draft

Subject
Quick call on stablecoin payments regulation?
Hi Jess, Congratulations on the move to Sidley and on the Western Union and Circle stablecoin work — timely given how fast the payments-regulatory landscape is shifting. I'm part of a deal team evaluating opportunities in the payments and merchant-acquiring space, and given your Federal Reserve background and front-line view on stablecoin infrastructure, I'd value 20-30 minutes to get your read on where regulators are heading and what diligence teams tend to miss on these deals. Would you have time for a short call in the next couple of weeks? Happy to work around your schedule. Best, [Your Name]

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