AstroPay is a multi-currency wallet with a presence in more than 10 Latin American countries, allowing its users to send, receive, and spend money in multiple currencies from a single app. With over 45,000 active users in Colombia and Mexico, the company needed a payment processor capable of handling local-currency collections, fast disbursements, and automatic reconciliation at scale. AstroPay’s case illustrates how a global fintech can integrate local payment infrastructure without building it from scratch, accelerating its entry into complex markets like Colombia and Mexico.
Before integrating Cobre, AstroPay relied on traditional banking channels (primarily ACH) to process disbursements in Colombia and Mexico. In practice, this meant that users requesting a withdrawal or receiving a payment could wait between 24 and 72 hours to see the funds reflected in their account. In a market where wallets compete to offer an instant experience, those times were a direct competitive disadvantage.
The problem was exacerbated by the regulatory complexity of operating in two different jurisdictions. Colombia requires that funds flow through authorized intermediaries and comply with the Foreign Exchange Statute, while Mexico operates under the Fintech Law with distinct licensing requirements and strict KYC/AML controls. Managing both frameworks from a single global platform required multiple integrations, dedicated compliance teams, and an operational burden that slowed expansion. The solution was not simply to switch banking providers, but to find an infrastructure that could natively handle that regulatory complexity without shifting it to AstroPay’s internal team.
Limitations of the previous model included:
AstroPay integrated Cobre’s API to centralize its collection and disbursement operations in Colombia and Mexico on a single platform. In Colombia, Cobre enabled disbursements through Bre-B (Colombia’s interoperable interbank network, which covers most of the country’s financial institutions) and Fast Pay (instant transfers between institutions with real-time confirmation), both of which settle within seconds. Collections are processed using dynamic Bre-B codes, which allow the payer to transfer funds seamlessly from any banking app. In Mexico, transactions are routed through SPEI (Banxico’s interbank electronic payment system) using virtual CLABEs for collections and disbursements to any bank account within the system.
This architecture solves the problem at its root by eliminating reliance on ACH and multiple local providers. AstroPay sends a payment instruction to the Cobre API and receives settlement confirmation in minutes, not days. Reconciliation is automated via webhooks that notify of every status change, reducing manual intervention to exceptional cases.
Features enabled by the integration:
Settlement times in Colombia went from hours or days (ACH) to an average of ~14 minutes with Bre-B and Fast Pay. In Mexico, the average time is ~35 minutes via SPEI. This allows AstroPay to compete with local wallets in terms of user experience without sacrificing controls.
Between February 2025 and February 2026, Cobre processed over 162,000 transactions in COP and 47,000 in MXN for AstroPay, with a transaction value exceeding $43 million COP and $80 million MXN. Volume grew without the need to expand operations teams or add additional integrations.
By centralizing Colombia and Mexico into a single API, AstroPay eliminated the need to manage separate banking providers by jurisdiction. Cobre absorbs regulatory and payment rail complexity, exposing a unified interface for both markets.
Each transaction generates events via webhooks that feed directly into AstroPay’s reconciliation system. This reduced manual intervention by the finance team and improved auditability across more than 209,000 transactions processed during the period.
AstroPay operates under a direct API integration model. The wallet sends payment and collection instructions to Cobre’s API, which executes them on local payment rails (Bre-B, Fast Pay in Colombia; SPEI in Mexico) and returns real-time confirmations via webhooks. This allows AstroPay to maintain control of the user experience while Cobre manages the financial infrastructure layer.
In Colombia, Cobre uses the Bre-B and Fast Pay rails, which enable settlements within seconds to most financial institutions. In Mexico, disbursements are executed via SPEI to any bank account with a CLABE. The customer sends an instruction to the API and receives status notifications at every stage of the process, from creation to deposit confirmation.
Cobre is designed for companies that process significant volumes of payments in Colombia and Mexico: digital wallets, PSPs, e-commerce platforms, remittance fintechs, licensed betting operators, and companies with multi-country treasury needs. Integration is feasible for both companies operating locally and global platforms with a regional presence.
Integration is performed via REST API with OAuth 2.0 authentication and JWT tokens. Cobre provides segregated test environments (sandboxes) to validate workflows before moving to production. Processing is asynchronous and event-driven: each transaction generates notifications via webhooks, enabling automated reconciliation and monitoring without the need for recurring queries.
