Theresa Y. Kananen

Theresa is a partner and the co-chair of the Payment Systems & Fintech industry team. She is also a member of the Litigation & Dispute Resolution and Employment practices and the Emerging Technologies industry team.

Theresa’s payments systems practice encompasses the spectrum of legal needs on the merchant acquiring side of the industry, ranging from regulatory and compliance advice, to negotiating commercial transactions, to handling adversarial disputes. Her clients include payment processors, independent sales organizations, payment facilitators, and embedded finance and fintech companies.

A litigator by training, Theresa represents her clients in a variety of commercial disputes, including those over chargebacks, reserves, data breaches, MATCH listings, and merchant solicitation, with lawsuits ranging from business breakups to one-off merchant fights to nationwide class actions. She also has extensive experience handling government investigations of payments companies by the Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Justice, and state attorneys general. She has taken multiple cases to jury trial and final hearings before arbitrators.

On the compliance and regulatory side, Theresa advises clients on card brand rules, including complex issues regarding surcharging, convenience fees, and cash discounting programs. In addition, bringing her experience in defending government investigations to bear, Theresa advises acquirers on underwriting and risk monitoring practices to manage their merchant portfolios. A significant portion of her practice is devoted to assisting payments clients in rolling out new products by advising on compliance in design and implementation and drafting the foundational contracts needed to forge new partnerships.

On the employment side, Theresa’s experience includes advising and training employers and representing them in a full range of employment litigation, including claims involving discrimination and harassment, wage and hour issues, restrictive covenants, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and employment contracts. She has experience before administrative agencies, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Department of Labor, as well as in both state and federal courts. She also regularly handles workplace investigations involving allegations of discrimination or harassment. An active speaker, Theresa regularly presents on the legal aspects of employment-related challenges.

Theresa graduated, magna cum laude, from the University of Georgia School of Law, where she was a member of the Georgia Law Review and was honored as Best Notes Editor for 2007-08. She previously studied English and Spanish at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and lived abroad in Brazil and Spain.