Data Engineer

Cobre and Toku join forces to move more than $200 million per year in real-time payments in Mexico. * The alliance integrates Cobre's payments infrastructure with Toku's collection platform, via Banco de México's SPEI. * They aim to process more than $200 million annually in business real-time payments, in a first stage. * They target sectors such as telecommunications, insurance, education, utilities, and subscriptions. Cobre, the Colombian fintech founded in 2020 by José Vicente Gedeón, Felipe Gedeón, Alberto Chejne, and José Donato, announced a strategic alliance with Toku, a Chilean firm specialized in recurring payments founded in 2020 by Cristina Etcheberry, Francisca Noguera, and Enzo Tamburini. The goal: to boost the mobilization of more than $200 million annually through real-time payments in Mexico. Specifically, the integration will combine Cobre's business payments infrastructure with Toku's collection platform. This will enable collection and reconciliation processes via the Interbank Electronic Payments System (SPEI) of Banco de México, available 24/7. Thus, Toku's business customers can receive, confirm, and reconcile payments without depending on banking hours. Automation of the collection cycle. In this context, the alliance targets industries such as telecommunications, insurance, education, utilities, and subscription models, where recurring collection is critical for daily operations. According to Natalia Vásquez, country manager at Cobre, "what this integration does is automate the entire collection cycle, from generating the charge to making funds available to the client. In other words, everything happens in real time." Furthermore, the integration will centralize processes from charge generation to automatic payment confirmation and reconciliation. At the same time, these flows will sync directly with accounting systems and ERP platforms, reducing operational friction. A system growing strongly. On the other hand, the alliance comes at a time of strong growth for SPEI in Mexico. During 2025, the system processed more than 7 billion operations, representing an increase of nearly 40% compared to the previous year, according to Banxico data. In fact, projections indicate that in 2026, SPEI transfers could surpass debit and credit card payments in volume. In line with this, Vásquez highlighted that "immediacy, interoperability, and 24/7 operation are no longer an additional attribute but a market necessity." She also advanced that the $200 million figure is just a starting point, as the company seeks to expand this model to other industries, such as mobility and communications. Related topics: June 16, 2026 Braven, the Colombian insurance infrastructure company founded and led by Carlos Chávez, closes a $4.6 million Seed round to accelerate its expansion into London and consolidate its operations in Latin America. The deal coincides with a corporate rebranding that, according to the company, reflects a category change: from a digitalization tool for [...] March 16, 2026 Azos, the Brazilian insurtech specialized in individual life insurance, closed a $23.7 million Series C round to accelerate its growth in a market dominated by large insurers. The round was led by Kaszek, which had also led the Series A, and Kevin Efrusy, an American investor who was one of the early backers of [...] April 22, 2026 Franco Rodríguez Viau was 16 when friends and family lost their homes to wildfires in Argentina. It was 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, and that curious teenager interested in social causes decided to do something about it. What started as a high school curriculum project became Satellites on Fire, a startup that [...] April 16, 2026 Innovation Smart District (ISD), the innovation hub based in Panama, announced the consolidation of a network of nine strategic partners with a clear goal: to take the Startup World Cup to 14 Spanish-speaking countries and connect Latin American entrepreneurial talent with global capital and opportunities. The alliance represents the broadest regional presence yet [...] April 7, 2026 Araucaria Venture, a venture capital firm based in Chile's IX Region and led by women, launched its first investment fund focused on high-impact tech startups in the Foodtech, Agtech, and Climatech sectors. The initiative has backing from Corfo and private capital, and operates under the conviction that [...]

Toku's recent Series A funding round raised $48 million, valuing the company at $175 million. This rapid growth, from a startup with just a PowerPoint and four clients to a valuation exceeding 170 billion Chilean pesos in five years, is unprecedented in Chile's traditional economy. While not directly comparable, this highlights the significant scale difference between tech startups and traditional companies like Banco de Chile and Santander, valued at $14.5 billion and $10.8 billion, respectively.