Feature · checked 29 September 2026
The face-value ticket exchange that became VibePay.
A face-value ticket app founded in 2013 that went into administration in 2018, was bought back by its founder, turned into the payments app VibePay, agreed a sale to Banked in 2025 that was never confirmed as completed, and whose companies resolved to wind up in February 2026.
Vibe Tickets offered fans "the opportunity to exchange tickets at face value and make new friends!" Its Stompstart listing, captured in July 2019 and seen on directory cards from February 2016, described an app for any event: "You can use Vibe to buy, you can use vibe to sell, you can use Vibe to meet other fans." It gave its stage as public beta, its markets as event organisers, theatre goers, sports fans and music fans, and its location as London.
The company behind it was in Lancashire. THEVIBE Limited was incorporated on 28 March 2013, with Luke Massie as a director, and moved its registered office from Preston to Lancaster in February 2018. A speaker profile says Massie founded Vibe Tickets in 2013 with £50,000 of his own money, raised £400,000 in seed rounds and a further £612,000, and lists a runner-up place in Virgin Media's VOOM competition in 2016.
On 10 May 2018, BusinessCloud reported that Vibe Tickets had entered administration and that Massie, its former chairman, had bought it back from the administrators. His new holding company, Vibe Group Holdings Ltd, was expected by the investor Vela Technologies to buy all of Vibe Tickets and Vibe Pay. Antony Laiker, a Vela director, said the app had reached more than 84,000 users and generated more than £7 million of ticket volume. A week later the publication gave the administration date as 30 April 2018, after plans to raise more money came to nothing. The business had raised £1.7 million, including from nearly 300 Crowdcube investors, and Massie said he would give the crowdfunding investors shares in the new company. THEVIBE Limited moved into a creditors' voluntary liquidation in November 2018 and was dissolved on 12 July 2021.
The successor companies, Vibe Tickets Limited and Vibe Pay Limited, had both been incorporated on 20 December 2017. In April 2025, a BusinessCloud profile reported that when Covid stopped people going to gigs, the business pivoted from tickets to a payments platform, VibePay. Massie called it "the UK's version of Cash App or Venmo," letting people send and receive money directly from their bank accounts, and the profile put its active users at around 250,000.
That week, Tech.eu reported that the pay-by-bank company Banked had agreed an all-share deal to acquire VibePay. Candy Ventures, Nick Candy's investment vehicle and VibePay's largest shareholder, was to take around 25 percent of the combined group. BusinessCloud's profile described the purchase as done, but an August 2025 report on Banked's accounts still called the deal subject to FCA approval.
Massie's directorships of Vibe Tickets Limited, Vibe Pay Limited and Vibe Group Holdings Limited ended on 9 December 2025. On 25 March 2026, Tech.eu reported that liquidators had been appointed to VibePay. A Candy Ventures spokesperson said the board had reviewed the business after Massie left and that key investors, shown its findings in January, decided not to commit further capital. Its sources said about 10 staff had been made redundant, after about 30 in 2025. Tech.eu also reported that the Banked deal did not go through, which its sources put down to issues arising in Banked's due diligence. Neither company confirmed that in anything we found, so whether the sale ever completed is not established; the register of controllers of Vibe Group Holdings Limited names Candy Ventures as its majority holder and lists no Banked company.
Vibe Tickets Limited, Vibe Pay Limited and Vibe Group Holdings Limited each passed a resolution to wind up on 24 February 2026, and voluntary liquidators' appointments were filed on 4 March 2026. The old address, vibetickets.co.uk, now forwards through vibepay.com to a domain marketplace listing for the VibePay name.