Jess Cheng

JESS CHENG represents clients on all aspects of payments law and regulatory matters critical to designing and bringing new payment solutions to market, as well as strategically mitigating risks around the corner. She advises companies across the payments ecosystem, including payment systems, stablecoin networks, fintech companies, digital marketplaces, neobanks, technology service providers, and crypto and blockchain enterprises, helping them adapt and thrive in a rapidly evolving regulatory environment.

Jess is widely recognized for combining deep regulatory knowledge with business-minded, practical advice that is strategic and straightforward to execute. She routinely helps clients craft creative regulatory strategies and sophisticated contractual arrangements to underpin payment offerings, with a view to minimizing legal risks, incorporating industry best practices, and advancing business needs.

“Jess is an absolute gem of a partner. She is extremely responsive, available and leverages her intimate industry knowledge and experience to give very practical, actionable regulatory guidance.”
Chambers FinTech 2026

Jess brings a rare combination of private practice, in-house, and public sector experience. Clients value her modern payments regulatory insights, developed from her time as senior counsel at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, where she led the drafting of modernized payments regulations and interagency policymaking on digital assets and stablecoins, and as an officer at the New York Fed, a provider of central bank payment services and master accounts. Jess also honed her ability to provide solution-oriented legal guidance on novel, complex, technology-driven financial issues during her previous role as deputy general counsel at enterprise crypto company Ripple.

Jess was ranked in the USA FinTech Legal: Payments & Lending category in the 2025 and 2026 editions of Chambers FinTech. Clients have praised her as “an excellent strategic thought partner,” noting, “She literally wrote the books on key legal areas for our business. She pairs that with amazing response times and practical commercial understanding” (Chambers FinTech 2026). A recognized leader in the payments industry, Jess has published articles cited by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, speeches by government officials, and central bank publications. She has written extensively on payments industry developments and been quoted in American Banker, CoinDesk, and TechCrunch.

• Advised Polygon Labs on its acquisitions of Coinme and Sequence.
• Advised Circle on its launch of Circle StableFX.
• Advised Xero on its acquisition of Melio.
• Advised Chime on its IPO.
• Advised Circle on its launch of Circle Payments Network.
• Advised Stripe on its acquisition of Bridge.
• Advised Featurespace on its sale to Visa.

The above matters were handled prior to joining Sidley.

• Member, American Law Institute
• Fellow, American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers
• Chair, Tokenized Payment Instruments Task Force, American Bar Association’s Uniform Commercial Code Committee of the Business Law Section
• Past Vice Chair, American Bar Association’s Uniform Commercial Code Committee of the Business Law Section
• Past Chair, Payments Subcommittee, 2018–2022
• Subject Matter Expert (by invitation), Legal issues related to digital innovations, Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures of the Bank for International Settlements, 2019