Mike Whalen

Mike Whalen is a co-leader of the firm’s FinTech practice. He is a trusted advisor to his Fintech clients, counselling on regulatory, transactional and enforcement matters.

Mike’s practice covers all tech-enabled consumer and small business financial products and services, including payments and money transmission, any loan product, deposits, alternative funding arrangements (e.g., early wage access services, home co-investing products, factoring, merchant cash advances) and virtual currencies.

Mike’s compliance practice covers product and service development, documentation, compliance, and state licensing.

Mike does transactional work on the products and services he advises on, including lending, payments and deposits banking as a service arrangements, program agreements, loan and receivables sales, servicing agreements, payment processing agreements, co-branded credit card deals, and lead generation agreements.

Mike also represents his clients in state regulator inquiries and actions.

Mike’s regulatory product work covers all kinds of loan products, alternative financing arrangements (e.g., income share agreements, factoring, merchant cash advances), payments, deposits, insurance, and digital currencies. He assists clients on product development, compliance, regulator actions and state licensing.

Mike’s regulatory service work centers on service providers that touch these products, including servicers, debt collectors, credit reporting agencies, escrow companies, loan brokers, lead generators, information aggregators, and money transmitters. He helps service providers build compliant solutions.

Mike’s transactional practice focuses on the products and services he advises on. He negotiates bank partnership arrangements, private label origination and servicing agreements, loan and receivables sales, co-branded credit card deals, and lead generation agreements.  He also conducts regulatory due diligence on acquisition targets and helps companies prepare for due diligence that will be conducted on them.

Mike is very active in digital currency + blockchain. He works with developers and sellers of tokens and coins, exchanges, wallet providers, smart contracts, node arrangements, lenders making digital currency secured loans and Bitcoin ATM operators.

Mike is currently counseling many of his fintech clients on the OCC fintech national bank and industrial loan company charters as an alternative to state-by-state licensing and regulation.

Mike was a recommended lawyer for fintech and Employee Benefits, Executive Compensation, and Retirement Plans: Transactional by The Legal 500 in 2021 and 2022.