Smitha Mortis, general counsel of Branch

Starting right before the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, new general counsel Smitha Mortis said she was just getting her bearings as the first and only lawyer at Branch Messenger Inc., a mobile payment app startup based in Minneapolis that provides fintech tools to the hourly worker.

Mortis assumed her role in December before the Christmas holiday, she said, but Branch made an official announcement about her joining the company last week. Now manning the one-person legal team remotely in Washington, D.C., Mortis said she plans to travel to Minneapolis for work once the pandemic ends. Branch has 77 employees who are all working remotely.

Supporting legal services in the fintech realm since 2007 and working remotely for over five years, Mortis said her experience padded the coronavirus blow.

A former PayPal Inc. in-house lawyer in D.C., Mortis most recently was the chief compliance officer at Klarna Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Swedish bank Klarna Bank AB. She said she was the fourth employee the company hired in the U.S. in 2014. When building the U.S. legal team, functions had been split down the middle, she said, and she ended up on the compliance side yet she still worked in other aspects of the legal department. That experience prepared her to take on the top lawyer role at Branch.

"For me, the transition wasn't that difficult because I was already doing a significant amount of legal work," she said. "I'm filling both roles and filling in compliance."

Despite the economic impact of the coronavirus, Mortis said fintech still lives in a constant state of flux amid regulatory uncertainty.

"In the area of fintech, the regulations aren't necessarily in place. They're specifically for brick-and-mortar banks, and I think the key is to balance the regulatory risks with the business need depending on what I do every day," she said. "It's like fitting a circle in a square hole."

Consumer protection laws, Mortis added, also rank high on the list for fintech in-house lawyers like herself, especially now with her company serving many of whom are considered essential workers amid the pandemic. According to Branch, hundreds of thousands of hourly workers at Fortune 1000 companies use its app every day to monitor their pay.

Branch produced a COVID-19 report on its customer base where it found that only 28% of hourly employees have the same level of pay from before the pandemic, and they're either still working the same number of hours or taking paid leave.

Mortis was introduced to Branch through a former colleague and met CEO Atif Siddiqi and other employees who she said were determined to create a sound product for the hourly worker. Also with Branch's headquarters in Minneapolis, she had a chance to return home.

"I think Branch is a great company," she said. "We service a population that needs some help. We're trying to do good things."

Founded in 2015, Branch has seen incredible growth over the last year. In 2019, Branch partnered with Mastercard and Evolve Bank & Trust to offer a free digital checking account and debit card for hourly workers; expanded the availability of its app suite feature called Pay to all users after limited availability to employees at select companies like Dunkin' Brands Inc., Taco Bell and Target Corp.; and joined the Kronos Workforce Dimensions Technology Partner Network to improve its product's workforce management platform.

This year so far, Branch entered an integration agreement with the software developer behind Domino's Pizza Inc.'s office system and joined Blackrock's Emergency Savings Initiative to help companies identify short-term financial stability for workers considered vulnerable with the current economy.

As for being the sole member of the legal department, Mortis pulls from her experience at Klarna with co-building the legal and compliance functions stateside. Post-pandemic depending on the company's growth, Mortis said she hopes to add more legal staff.

"A lot of it will depend on the strategic direction with the growth itself. I support human resources, contract negotiation and contract development, and the regulatory side," she said. "The next hire that would make sense is to have a commercial lawyer, or a junior compliance officer, depending on where we are."