The hearts and minds behind the platform that redefined local commerce in Malta

By Luke Vella, Hot Malta

On a slow Tuesday afternoon in 2018, while most of Sliema was sipping espresso on the front, three friends huddled around a wobbly table in a back-street café and sketched something on a napkin that would later change how Maltese buy, sell and even think about their own neighbourhoods. The napkin—now framed and hanging in their Valletta HQ—reads simply “Keep Money on the Rock.” That sentence became the soul of KeepItLocal.mt, the peer-to-peer marketplace that has quietly turned the island’s “who-knows-who” economy into an open, buzzing bazaar of lace-making nannas, 3-D-printing teens and rooftop-farmers alike.

Malta’s commerce has always run on connections. Your cousin’s friend’s uncle had a boat? You got the lampuki. Needed a wrought-iron gate? You asked at the village band club. The system worked—until it didn’t. Rising rents pushed artisans out of their workshops, and imported knock-offs filled the shelves. Meanwhile, tourists and locals alike scrolled global giants where the euro left the island faster than a Ryanair turnaround. “We realised the problem wasn’t a lack of talent,” says co-founder Sarah Camilleri, a former HSBC analyst who quit her London job to move back to Naxxar. “It was a lack of visibility.”

The platform they built feels unmistakably Maltese. Listings open with a jaunty “Issa naraw!” instead of “Buy Now.” A built-in map shows the seller’s village festa route so you can time your pickup with pastizzi and brass bands. Even the Maltese language toggle doesn’t just translate: it switches to phonetic spellings for older users who text in “Maltenglish.” Within 18 months 4,700 vendors had signed up—everyone from Gozitan cheesemakers to Marsaxlokk carpenters. Traffic grew so fast that Melita had to lay extra fibre along the coast.

But the real magic happened off-screen. Every Saturday morning a tatty white van with “KeepItLocal.mt” painted in traditional Maltese tiles pulls up to a different village square. Inside are the week’s highest-rated sellers, turning the van into a pop-up souk. In Rabat last month, 82-year-old lace artisan Maria Pace sold out of her handmade bizzilla cuffs in 40 minutes. “I hadn’t left my house for a year,” she says, eyes shining. “Today I met a bride who’ll wear my lace on her wedding day. We took selfies!” That bride, in turn, posted the story, which brought 300 new users to Maria’s page overnight.

The cultural payoff goes deeper than euros. University of Malta anthropologist Dr. Ranier Fsadni argues the platform has “re-ritualised” commerce. “Buying isn’t just transactional anymore—it’s social,” he notes. “You meet the person who carved your crib, you hear the story behind the olive-wood. The object becomes a talisman of identity.” Even traditionalists who once sniffed at “internet pastimes” have come around. The Għaqda tal-Pastizzari has started a campaign listing every family-run pastizzeria, while the Malta Crafts Council funds photography workshops so potters and glass-blowers can snap their wares like Vogue spreads.

Then came COVID-19. As flights stopped and hotel lobbies emptied, KeepItLocal.mt’s traffic tripled overnight. Restaurants that never delivered suddenly offered “ħobż biż-żejt meal kits.” Farmers sold mystery boxes of surplus produce. A virtual Festa firework show—filmed from rooftops and synced to village brass bands—was streamed to 60,000 homes, raising €120,000 for food banks. “It felt like the whole island squeezed into one big living room,” says co-founder Karl Briffa, who coded the livestream from his parents’ Għargħur garage.

Today the platform hosts 12,400 active sellers and clocks 1.2 million monthly page views—impressive in a country of 515,000 souls. Plans are under way for an eco-delivery fleet of electric tuk-tuks painted in festa colours, and a youth “maker” scholarship funded by a percentage of every sale. “We’re not just a website,” Camilleri insists. “We’re the village square gone digital.”

As the sun sets over Valletta’s golden limestone, the napkin on the wall catches the last light. What started as three friends scribbling in a café has become the beating heart of a small nation determined to keep its stories—and its euros—close to home. In Malta, commerce now has a hometown, and it’s spelled with a .mt.