Cobee launched in Madrid in 2019 to fix something specific about Spanish employment: the country's employee benefits system is generous and tax-advantaged, and almost impossible for a small HR team to administer. Meal vouchers, transport, childcare, training, health insurance — each carries its own rules, providers and paperwork, and most companies either outsourced the mess or simply didn't offer benefits at all.
Cobee's answer was a single card and app that consolidated every benefit into one place. Employees see and spend their allowances from one balance; employers configure the whole programme from one dashboard, with the tax treatment handled automatically. The product spanned more than twelve benefit types, including meal vouchers, training, health and life insurance, wellbeing and employee discounts, and its modular technology allowed it to expand into Portugal and Mexico without rebuilding.
The traction was substantial. Cobee served over 1,500 corporate clients and around 100,000 employees, won BBVA's Open Talent competition in 2019, and was on track for more than 100% year-on-year organic growth in its 2024 fiscal year. Co-founders Borja Aranguren and Ignacio Travesí built it with backing from investors including Balderton Capital.
In June 2024, Pluxee — the employee benefits group spun off from Sodexo, operating in 31 countries and serving more than 37 million consumers — agreed to acquire 100% of Cobee, completing the deal in September 2024 after Spanish regulatory approval. It was the first acquisition of Pluxee's stated M&A strategy, and the logic was straightforward: Pluxee already led the Spanish benefits market by volume with 330,000 employee consumers, but Cobee had the technology and the digital-native product experience. Cobee is therefore no longer an independent Spanish fintech — it operates as a Pluxee company, and its platform now serves the group's broader benefits offering across Spain, Portugal and Mexico.