Digitalise Your SME · Call 2 · Open now
Malta will pay for half the software you were going to build anyway.
We scope the project, write the application, and then actually build the thing. Same person, start to finish.
€15,000,000 in the pot.
Up to €235,400 per business.
Rolling cut-offs until the money runs out.
What would it actually cost you?
EstimateIndicative only. Assumes roughly a third of the project is AI cost items when the AI toggle is on. Final aid depends on which of your costs the evaluator accepts as eligible. Most of the grant pays out through advances and claims as you go; the MDIA slice is paid a year after completion, against a productivity gains report and an ethical-AI report.
Eligible costs
It pays for the system, and the tools around it.
Broader than most people expect: the build itself, the software it runs on (two years of a subscription counts), the hardware under it. What it will not pay for: consultancy fees, maintenance, or anything you started before the award.
Fundable
- Custom software and web platforms
- CRM and ERP implementation, automation and integrations
- AI solutions — document extraction, triage, drafting
- Off-the-shelf and subscription software — two years of a subscription counts
- Hardware — laptops, tablets, monitors, routers
- Cloud, cyber security, IoT and big data
Not fundable
- Work you already started before the grant is awarded
- VAT, insurance, and repair or maintenance agreements
- Consultancy, design and marketing fees
- Used or refurbished equipment
- Mobile phones and network cabling
- Anything you can't tie to a productive purpose
What does a fundable project look like in practice? The invoice pile someone retypes into the accounting package every morning. The booking requests that live in a WhatsApp thread until somebody keys them in. The Monday report rebuilt by hand from three systems that do not talk to each other. If a person in your business does the same task twice a day, there is probably a project in it: a booking platform, a client portal, a CRM wired into your accounts, a document-reading AI that keys in what it reads.
Why Kiwa
Grant consultant or software studio? The scheme rewards the thing in the middle.
The market splits in two. Grant consultants know the paperwork but hand you a PDF and disappear; you still have to find a developer, and the scope they promised may not be buildable at the price they wrote down. Dev shops can build, but do not know what an evaluator reads, so strong projects get written up weakly. An application whose business case, cost breakdown and technical narrative were written by the team that will deliver them is a different document. That is the whole pitch. One line, no handoffs.
It also rewards specifics. An application that says "we process around 200 supplier invoices a month, two people touch each one, and extraction plus matching removes most of that handling" reads very differently from one that promises digital transformation. That is exactly what our scoping session and the assistant are built to draw out of you, and it is why our applications go in with figures rather than adjectives.
The platforms behind Princess Garage, Nova Drive and Dealer Pro run as daily business tools, and that is the standard the funded build is held to. And worth knowing: the scheme adds an automatic 7% flat rate on top of eligible costs for indirect expenses, no receipts required. Direct consultancy fees are not an eligible cost, which is priced into our fixed fee.
How we work
Three steps. You can stop after any of them.
Most grant consultants hand you a PDF and disappear. Most dev shops don't know what an evaluator reads. We do the whole line.
Eligibility & scope
One session. We check you actually qualify, pick the processes worth automating, and put a real number on the grant. If you don't qualify, we say so and you owe nothing.
Application pack
Project plan, business case, cost breakdown, technical narrative. We help you source the three comparable quotes, submit through the portal, and track it through each cut-off until you get a decision.
Build & release the top-up
We build the system. A year on, we write the productivity gains report and the ethical-AI report that release the MDIA top-up — the part most suppliers walk away from.
Timing
Rolling submissions. Not rolling money.
Applications are assessed at each cut-off. Cut-offs continue until the end of 2026 — or until the €15 million is gone, whichever comes first. Earlier is materially safer.
Four jobs
Almost every business has at least two of these.
Different industries, same four problems. The research on what they cost — and what fixing them is worth — is unusually consistent.
Paper that reads itself
Ardent Partners puts the average fully loaded cost of processing one invoice at $10.89. Teams using AI capture and automated matching do it for $2.78. Modern AI extraction reads layouts it has never seen and hits 95%+ field-level accuracy — against a 1–4% error rate on invoices keyed by hand.
Systems that stop ignoring each other
Salesforce found the average sales rep spends 17% of their working hours — the best part of a day a week — manually entering data into a CRM. Most of that is re-keying something that already exists in another system. Wire the systems together and the second and third entry disappear.
Approvals that chase themselves
The average approval cycle runs 10.9 days. Automated teams close the same loop in 3.1 — roughly 72% faster — almost entirely by removing the manual handoffs. Exception rates fall from 22% to 9%, so fewer things get stuck in the first place.
The end of the Monday spreadsheet
McKinsey estimates knowledge workers lose about a fifth of their time searching for and consolidating information that already exists somewhere. Build the report once, let it refresh itself, and that fifth comes back.
Questions we get
The honest answers, before the call.
How much is the grant really worth?
The grant covers 50% of eligible costs (60% in Gozo) plus an automatic 7% for indirect costs, capped at €128,400 for standard items. AI cost items get their own additional allowance of up to €107,000 at the same rates, and an extra 10% MDIA slice on top, paid a year after completion against two reports. There is also a €25,000 minimum grant, so very small projects do not qualify. The €235,400 headline is the ceiling, not the typical case. Slide the calculator above for your own numbers.
Who qualifies?
Malta-registered SMEs with fewer than 250 employees. Check two traps early: state aid from the last three years counts against a €300,000 de minimis ceiling, and a project that is tiny relative to your net assets (under roughly 2%) can be rejected as not needing assistance.
What will it not pay for?
Work started before the grant is awarded, VAT, insurance, repair and maintenance agreements, consultancy and marketing fees, used equipment, mobile phones and network cabling. Software subscriptions are eligible, with two years of the subscription counted as the cost. Every item needs an investment proposal or three quotes behind it.
What are the deadlines?
Rolling cut-offs roughly every 15 days. The first is 31 July 2026, and the scheme runs to the end of 2026 or until the pot is committed, whichever comes first.
Can you guarantee approval?
No, and nobody honest will. Applications are assessed competitively by the scheme's evaluators. We only submit applications we believe in: if your case is weak, we tell you in the free session, before you have spent anything.
What do you need from me to start?
A rough idea of the manual process you would automate. The assistant at grants.kiwastudio.com collects the basics in about ten minutes, or book the free eligibility call and we will work it out together.
Find out in 90 minutes whether this is real for you.
No fee, no pitch deck. We look at what your team does by hand, tell you if it qualifies, and give you the number.
Figures on this page are indicative and drawn from public announcements of Call 2 of the Digitalise Your SME scheme. Kiwa Studio is an independent supplier and is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the Government of Malta, Fondi.eu, Malta Enterprise or the MDIA. Always confirm eligibility, caps and cut-off dates against the official call guidelines before committing spend.