A Kenyan neobank that routes payments through stablecoin infrastructure has raised $500,000 from Alliance, a New York crypto accelerator, bringing its disclosed pre-seed funding to $1 million, according to Disrupt Africa. The startup, Cloud9, already operates multi-currency accounts for more than 25,000 users and has completed two acquisitions since its launch.
The company's founders, Tesh Mbaabu and Mesongo Sibuti, are no strangers to building and dismantling startups. Their previous venture, MarketForce — a YC Winter 2020 alum — shut down its B2B e-commerce operation RejaReja in 2024, TechCrunch reported. Before that, the pair co-founded Cloud9xp, a leisure marketplace acquired by HotelOnline in mid-2020. The pattern suggests a pragmatic approach to exits, pivots, and fresh starts in East Africa's fintech ecosystem.
Cloud9's app offers accounts in eight currencies, including Kenyan shillings, dollars, euros, yuan, and three regional East African currencies, alongside wallets for Tether's USDT stablecoin. The company has been logging roughly 15 percent week-over-week growth in transaction volumes, though it declined to share absolute payment figures or revenue metrics.
In May, Cloud9 acquired M-Tickets, a Kenyan ticketing platform, in an all-stock deal valued at about 100 million Kenyan shillings, according to TechCabal. Three months later came Chpter, a conversational commerce tool serving north of 4,500 businesses, in another equity swap, TechTrendsKE reported. It's an unusually aggressive acquisition tempo for a company still in its pre-seed stage, though the all-stock structure keeps cash burn in check.
Banking services flow through Choice Microfinance Bank, a Central Bank of Kenya-licensed institution. Cloud9 positions itself firmly as a fintech intermediary rather than a regulated bank, a disclosure it makes explicit on its website. The setup mirrors strategies from neobanks elsewhere that layer software and user experience atop third-party banking charters.
Customers can order virtual or physical Visa cards, pay bills, stash money in branded savings features called Vaults, and send transfers to more than 100 destinations via mobile money, bank transfers, or SWIFT. A recently launched investment product, Cloud9 Wealth, runs on infrastructure from Bluum Finance and offers fractional access to stocks, crypto, money-market funds, and portfolios. "Young Africans are building wealth in a global economy, but our financial infrastructure has kept them locked into local markets," Mbaabu wrote in a September blog post announcing the Bluum tie-up.
The stablecoin layer is where Cloud9's pitch diverges from typical African fintech narratives. Alliance general partner Imran Khan framed the investment around infrastructure for cross-border commerce. "Stablecoins are becoming the settlement layer for global trade, and Africa is where that shift matters most," Khan told Disrupt Africa. The outlet reported that Kenyan entrepreneurs import over $20 billion in goods annually, often relying on informal agents when traditional banking channels prove slow or prohibitively expensive.
Cloud9's stablecoin wallet lets users receive USDT and convert it instantly to bank or mobile-money balances, according to the company's website. Whether stablecoins gain traction as payment rails in a market where Safaricom's M-Pesa already dominates domestic digital transactions remains an open question. GSMA data shows mobile money handles the bulk of Kenya's consumer payments, while cross-border flows are contested by Wise, Flutterwave, Pesapal, and Onafriq, among others, SendTech Times reported.
Cloud9 participated in the Techstars NYC Fall 2025 cohort, the accelerator disclosed in a December blog post. The company also secured backing from undisclosed angel investors alongside its institutional capital. Cloud9's team spans between 11 and 50 employees, according to LinkedIn, though the company declined to share specifics on headcount or the identity of its early backers.
The startup's rapid-fire acquisition strategy and stablecoin infrastructure bet position it as a test case for whether crypto rails can solve real friction in African trade finance — or whether mobile money incumbents will simply absorb the use cases before upstarts gain scale.
