Katherine Kennedy

Katherine is a Fractional General Counsel with over 20 years’ experience advising fintech, payments and technology businesses. She trained and practised at Slaughter and May before moving in-house into senior and board-level roles, including General Counsel positions at Pay.com and SETL. Her practice focuses on payments, open banking and digital assets, with deep experience across PSD2, FCA regulation, data protection and emerging frameworks such as DORA. She has led legal functions across the UK, EU and US, supporting businesses through growth, regulatory change and strategic transactions, and now advises clients as a fractional GC, providing senior, embedded legal support focused on enabling commercial outcomes and managing regulatory risk.

More about Katherine

Katherine is a pragmatic, commercially-focused lawyer who works closely with leadership teams to deliver clear, actionable advice in complex environments.
She has particular experience in building and scaling legal functions within startups and scale-ups, including implementing contract automation, redesigning legal processes and reducing reliance on external counsel. Her approach is hands-on and integrated, often acting as a true extension of the business.
Her practice spans complex commercial agreements (including SaaS, technology and partnership arrangements), payments and financial services regulation, data protection and governance. She is particularly experienced in “first-of-their-kind” environments, including open banking, crypto and digital infrastructure.
She has also held non-executive roles, including at Coinify, advising on regulatory and strategic matters.

Recent work

• Acting as Fractional General Counsel to fintech and crypto businesses on regulatory strategy and commercial contracting.
• Leading legal support for acquisitions within regulated payments businesses.
• Advising on implementation of new regulatory frameworks, including Buy Now Pay Later and DORA.
• Designing and implementing contract automation and legal operations processes.
• Redrafting full suites of commercial documentation, including SaaS agreements, MSAs and platform terms.
• Advising e-money institutions on cross-border regulatory perimeter and structuring.
• Supporting wind-down of regulated entities across the UK and Europe.
• Leading negotiations on complex technology, licensing and partnership agreements with financial institutions.