DLA Piper

Your dedicated fintech partner around the world

Technology is challenging established ways of doing business and creating opportunities for existing market participants and new entrants. Seizing the opportunity requires a nuanced understanding of the risks involved. Our team can provide a full spectrum of fintech legal support.

Technology is redefining the financial services sector and the way businesses interact with clients and customers. Your organization must constantly assess what’s next. Should we invest in the latest technology even if it might be disruptive to the industry? You need to lead with the right questions – will this tool diversify our product range, improve efficiencies, help us manage risk more effectively or reach a wider customer base? The answers aren’t always clear cut.

Our multidisciplinary team helps a wide range of clients around the world ranging from banks to private equity and venture capital funds, asset managers, broker-dealers, insurance companies, trading platforms and exchanges. We advise tech businesses on raising funding, investors on investing in tech, companies on the use of distributed-ledger technology and the different ways of harnessing innovation while protecting and enhancing technology rights and establishing efficient compliance with applicable law and regulation.

“You need to lead with the right questions – will this tool diversify our product range, improve efficiencies, help us manage risk more effectively or reach a wider customer base?”

We provide the full scope of local and global fintech legal services covering both day-to-day and highly complex matters. From financing to corporate, data and technology, IP, exit strategies and regulation – we advise with your broader business goals in mind. With TOKO, our digital asset creation engine, we help build technology delivery solutions and digital assets.

We have vast experience in the payments services market, representing organizations throughout the value chain, including banks, payment services providers, card scheme operations, merchants, acquirers, and other technology providers.

We also handle trading and clearing, investment, lending, financial information services, and insurance and in particular how these sectors are affected by developing technologies such as blockchain, AI and machine leaning and robotics technology.

Awards and recognition

Most Innovative Law Firm, Financial Times
Moving the Market Forward, FT Innovative Lawyer Awards Asia Pacific 2021
Top ranked for TMT, Chambers Global
Ranked for Fintech, Legal 500 US
Ranked for Fintech Legal, Data Protection and Cybersecurity, Chambers USA
Ranked for Fintech, Chambers Global

Experience

Advising a major payment services provider (PSP) on its contract documentation with international mobile network operators (MNOs) and corridor providers to permit the PSP’s customers to make international money transfers via SMS to the customers of MNOs.
DLA Piper is working with digital asset exchange operator Archax Limited to develop an institutional market for digital securities. We have assisted Archax in establishing first regulated digital Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF) and we have been providing ongoing regulatory compliance as well as transactional support for over two years. Archax has become the first ever digital securities exchange and custodian which is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK.
Partnership with Bloqhouse leveraging our experience in privacy, regulatory and financial law to provide for the legally compliant tokenisation of real estate assets on a global scale.
Advising a developer of a multi-signature secure digital wallet offering various services for businesses using digital currency to keep bitcoin secure from theft and loss.
Advising a major global bank on its licensing of and investment in companies developing secure ledger and secure transaction services using blockchain technology.
Structuring a USD20 million token offering for a real estate developer to finance a Hong Kong hotel renovation. This involved DLA Piper assembling a consortium of service providers and leading dialogue with the SFC.
Acted for art brokerage Macey & Sons on the tokenisation of a physical painting. A certificate of authenticity and a video of the artists creating their art were hashed into the virtual assets. This was done to establish the provenance and authenticity of the artwork on the blockchain. The smart contract also facilitates the transfer of the artwork’s copyright upon the first issuance and subsequent transfer of the virtual asset.
Advising the leading online game platform and game creation system, with regard to its proposed offering of a stored value gift card that stores fiat currency in a digital form that is to be used on their website for purchases and as an in-game currency (called “Robux”). Specifically, as part of our work for this client, we analysed all issues arising from the Singapore Payment Service Act and the Hong Kong Stored Value Facilities regulations, in addition to whether such an offering of Robux constitutes a digital payment token service.
Advising Luther Systems, a blockchain development technology company, on its own fund raising and technology solutions to the insurance, property, health and other sectors.
Assisting a major cryptocurrency exchange (one of the largest bitcoin exchanges in the world) on structuring its expansion into a number of jurisdictions in the Asia Pacific region.
Advising a UK retail bank on the roll-out of a novel and bespoke automated treasury services platform that it developed to deliver hedging services to its customers. The hedging and other services provided will include loan modelling, live pricing and booking, management information capture, and debt pool analysis for originators of residential mortgages, credit cards, corporate loans, SME loans and any other type of debt pool that requires hedging.