Digitizing Payments and Wage Access

Client

Cobraste is a startup focused on accelerating payments for workers in industries where wages and tips are typically handled in cash. Their product offers two primary use cases:

• TIPS: Enables workers in industries like restaurants to receive and track tip payments digitally. Cobraste integrates with payroll systems to make funds available to employees on the same day.
• EWA (Earned Wage Access): Allows employees to access their earned wages before payday. Depending on the type of employment, Cobraste calculates the proportional wage earned each day and enables salary advances based on that amount.

Cobraste helps workers manage financial needs in real time, which they can access through multiple channels:

• Bank transfer (free, takes two business days)
• Instant Card (a virtual debit card)
• ATH Móvil (a payment platform, which charges a transaction fee)

Requirements & Context

As an early-stage startup with a minimal team, Cobraste faced a critical transition when two key team members were leaving. They needed a skilled technical team to take over, maintain, and evolve their product. They were initially looking for PostgreSQL expertise but ultimately required a broader skill set, including TypeScript and API architecture.

Manas was brought in to stabilize and scale their platform while helping Cobraste recruit and build an internal development team.

The immediate priority was onboarding a large number of users from a new enterprise client, which required platform stability and availability. The TIPS functionality was in place, but the infrastructure for EWA still had to be built.

At the start of our engagement, Cobraste’s technical landscape presented several challenges:

• All business logic was embedded in SQL queries rather than a dedicated application layer.
• Balance calculations were performed on view instead of a ledger model, causing inconsistencies where users sometimes saw a zero balance despite having available funds.
• Database connections were not properly managed, leading to intermittent system outages.
• No version control for the database schema, making it difficult to track changes or match schema versions with API versions.
• Security vulnerabilities in credential management, with database user credentials hardcoded in scripts.
• A transition from Crystal to Nest.js, aligning with Cobraste's evolving technology strategy and team expertise.

Approach

Manas integrated two senior engineers into Cobraste’s team, working alongside their developers to address technical debt, implement missing functionality, and set the foundation for a scalable architecture.

Our first priority was ensuring system stability and availability for the influx of new users. We identified and resolved connection management issues, improving database reliability and preventing unexpected downtime.

We then focused on building the entire backend infrastructure for EWA, creating a flexible, scalable data model that could support different employer payroll structures. Since Cobraste’s first enterprise client required custom integrations, we designed a system that would work for them while remaining adaptable to future clients.

To streamline development and improve maintainability, we led the migration from Crystal to Nest.js, in alignment with Cobraste’s evolving needs.

A structured Data Pipeline was introduced to normalize all incoming payroll and transaction data, making it easier to integrate different employer systems without requiring ad-hoc transformations for each client.

We also worked on improving software development practices, including:

• Implementing version control for the database schema to ensure changes were tracked and could be synchronized with API updates.
• Introducing secure credential management to replace hardcoded database credentials in scripts.
• Standardizing API development to improve maintainability and scalability.

Results

Manas.Tech played a key role in stabilizing Cobraste’s platform, ensuring that both TIPS and EWA function reliably and efficiently.

We built the entire backend for EWA, including data ingestion, business logic, and API infrastructure, creating a system that is scalable, secure, and designed for rapid growth. The modular design allows new clients to onboard quickly while maintaining stability for existing users.

The Data Pipeline now centralizes all employer data, ensuring that only structured, validated data is processed by Cobraste’s system. Any payroll information not structured through the Data Pipeline is considered non-existent, reinforcing data integrity.

The migration to Nest.js provided Cobraste with a more maintainable and developer-friendly API, replacing the previous Crystal-based implementation.

Cobraste’s platform currently supports 2,700 daily users, with TIPS processing nearly 1,000 transactions per day.

Through a combination of immediate fixes, long-term architecture improvements, and process standardization, we helped Cobraste move from a system struggling with instability to a robust, scalable financial platform ready for expansion.

Send money

Cobraste provides immediate earned wage access to its users. The UX is simple: your balance increases each time you end a shift, and you can transfer part or all of it to your bank account with one or two clicks.