Cloud9, a Nairobi-based digital bank aimed at young customers, has acquired Mtickets, a Kenyan platform that sells tickets for concerts, sports events and transport. The deal was announced in May 2026 and was listed in Launch Base Africa's deal tracker on 22 May.
Launch Base Africa valued the transaction at about KES 100 million (about $773,000) and reported that it was paid entirely in Cloud9 stock, which means Mtickets' owners were paid in shares of the buyer rather than cash. Daba Finance later gave the same price. Dealroom, in a report on Cloud9's next acquisition, put the cost at about $973,500, and some other outlets that covered the deal did not report a figure at all.
Cloud9 plans to build Mtickets' ticketing into its own app, so that users can find, buy and manage tickets for events, entertainment and travel in one place. The companies did not say what would happen to the Mtickets brand or how many staff would join Cloud9.
What Mtickets built
Mtickets runs an end-to-end ticketing service on mobile and the web. Launch Base Africa reported that it had processed more than one million tickets since 2014 across concerts, sports and transit. Lucidity Insights named Brian Bogonko as the company's founder.
The platform serves event organisers as well as buyers, which is the part of the business Cloud9 values most. Daba Finance said Mtickets gives Cloud9 a link to event organisers and ticket buyers that it can try to turn into banking customers. The reports did not disclose Mtickets' revenue, funding history or investors.
For a bank that had been operating for only a few months, buying an existing ticketing business was a quicker way to reach organisers and buyers than building a ticketing product itself. Mtickets brings a working platform, a customer base in Kenya and more than a decade of sales history that Cloud9 says it can use to judge which organisers are good credit risks.
Why Cloud9 is buying
Cloud9 is a young company. It was launched in late 2025 by Tesh Mbaabu and Mesongo Sibuti, weeks after the pair left Chpter, the social commerce startup they had founded. Daba Finance said Cloud9 offers multi-currency accounts, cross-border payments and treasury services. Mbaabu has described the goal as an everything-money app for Africa's mobile-first generation.
Launch Base Africa said the purpose of the deal was to bring lifestyle and entertainment spending directly into Cloud9's banking core. Cloud9 plans to use ticket sales data to underwrite business credit for event organisers, and to offer buy-now-pay-later options to people buying tickets.
Arab Founders reported that the financing for organisers is meant to cover venues, talent bookings, marketing and production costs before an event takes place. Organisers would also get business banking, digital collections, payouts and cash flow tools, while ticket buyers would get faster payments, cashback and offers through the app.
Beyond concerts
Lucidity Insights reported that Cloud9 also planned to pilot air travel bookings, bus ticketing, cinema ticketing and other entertainment and lifestyle purchases. That would extend the Mtickets technology beyond the events and transport tickets it already sells.
Several African fintech companies have tried to combine payments with everyday spending such as transport and entertainment, and Arab Founders described the deal as part of that broader push to build wider digital ecosystems around financial services.
A second deal followed
Mtickets was Cloud9's first acquisition. In August 2026 the company bought Chpter, the social commerce platform its founders had left, in a share-only transaction whose value was not disclosed. Daba Finance reported that Chpter added about 4,500 businesses that sell through social media.
Daba Finance noted that Cloud9 had not set out a timetable for profitability or its next funding round, and that the success of both acquisitions depends on whether the customers they bring in take up enough of its banking and payment products.
