Nairobi fintech Cloud9 has raised $500,000 in equity from Alliance, a New York crypto accelerator and founder community. The money is part of a pre-seed round that is still open, bringing Cloud9’s total announced funding to $1 million.
What is The Cloud9?
Cloud Nine Payments Ltd. is a financial technology company, not a bank. Choice MFB provides banking services, which are regulated by the Central Bank of Kenya.
Cloud9 is young and has been quite busy. Tesh Mbaabu and Mesongo Sibuti debuted the company in October 2025, just than two weeks after leaving their day-to-day responsibilities at social commerce startup Chpter. It currently sells to both enterprises and youthful internet users, providing multicurrency accounts, cross-border payments, and virtual cards.
Funding Details
Alliance, a New York-based creator community and cryptocurrency accelerator, invested $500,000 in Cloud9. The first round of venture capital financing was announced in October 2026.
In May, Cloud9 paid around KES 100 million ($773,000) for ticketing platform M-Tickets. In August, it acquired Chpter in an all-stock transaction, adding over 4,500 firms that currently sell on WhatsApp and Instagram. The concept underlying both transactions is to acquire platforms where customers already transact and then add financial services on top.
The founders have scaled (and failed) previously. Their previous firm, B2B e-commerce platform MarketForce, raised more than $42 million, operated in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda, and served over 270,000 merchants before closing down.
