At Ignacio Detmer’s former company, the promise was simple: Sell your car and get paid within an hour. Keeping that promise was harder. Before a busy holiday weekend, the company had to move enough cash into the right market days ahead of time. A bad forecast could leave customers waiting and trust broken.
That memory now helps explain Koywe, the financial infrastructure company Detmer built with Guillermo Acuña, his friend since age five. Its platform lets businesses move money into, out of and across Latin America within minutes, even on weekends.
“We have been friends since we were five years old,” Detmer told Refresh Miami. Both Chilean founders later built large technology companies separately. Acuña co-founded digital lender Cumplo, while Detmer helped start Frontier Car Group. In 2022, they decided the timing was finally right to work together.
They entered Y Combinator in January 2023 with, as Detmer put it, “no problem, no customers, no tech.” What they soon found was a region poorly connected to the United States and the wider financial system.
Koywe became a treasury platform for companies operating across those gaps. Businesses can collect local payments, exchange currencies and settle funds in fiat or stablecoins. Its controls can support complex approval rules, while customers can use the website, an API or even connect the service to an AI assistant.
Acuña recently tested the value himself. Another service estimated three days to send money from the United States to Chile, and a traditional wire left him unsure how many pesos would arrive. With Koywe, he completed the transfer “within minutes.”
“We’re redefining the time dimension of moving money, but also the prices, the transparency, and the visibility,” Acuña said. The aim, he added, was to let companies focus on growth instead of cash placement.
Koywe now has about 100 employees and operates across seven Latin American markets. The company processes more than $2 billion in annual transaction volume and has raised $12.5 million from investors including Y Combinator, Franklin Templeton, and Concentric VC.
Miami serves as its U.S. base. Detmer moved here six years ago and sees the city as a meeting point for U.S. investors, regional business leaders and crypto partners. “Miami is the capital of Latin America,” he said. Acuña, now based in Santiago, noted that flying between Latin American cities can be harder than meeting through Miami.
The pair’s recent selection as Endeavor Entrepreneurs adds a global support network to that base. For Acuña, it also comes with a distinctly local perk: he said he was happy to attend Endeavor Miami’s barbecues. (We can’t blame him.)
Their selection followed an International Selection Panel in Athens, capping a relationship that began through Endeavor ScaleUp.
“We’re living in a world where there’s hypergrowth. AI is changing how we operate. It’s still difficult to see or predict how the future is going to look. But I believe being part of the Endeavor community, especially Endeavor Miami, is going to play a big part in our success,” Acuña said.
Pictured above: Koywe Co-founders Guillermo Acuña, at left, and Ignacio Detmer.
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