Xero to Add BILL’s AP Capabilities to Small Business Platform

Xero, a global small business platform, will enhance its accounts payable (AP) capabilities for its U.S. customers through a new partnership with BILL, a financial operations platform for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

This partnership will bring a bill pay solution from BILL directly into the Xero platform, the companies said in a Thursday (Feb. 29) press release. More details about the solution will be released later this year.

“Through our partnership with BILL, we can offer customers more robust bill pay capabilities and broad payment choices, which further strengthens Xero’s U.S. offering and reinforces our commitment to deepen customer support and engagement,” Diya Jolly, chief product officer at Xero, said in the release.

The bill pay solution will be designed to help SMBs overcome the challenges they face in paying bills and managing cash flow efficiently, according to the release. The current process is often manual and fragmented.

Through their new partnership, Xero and BILL aim to make financial automation and cash flow management easier for small businesses that use the Xero platform, the release said.

The embedded bill pay solution will allow customers to pay bills seamlessly without the need to make manual bank transfers, write checks or enter credit card details, per the release. Customers will also have access to BILL’s network of 5.8 million members, making it easier to find and pay vendors.

The new bill pay solution will join Xero’s global small business platform that includes a core accounting solution, payroll, workforce management, expenses and projects, according to the release. The platform has 3.95 million subscribers.

“Our agile platform enables us to incorporate capabilities into partner solutions to extend our ability to serve more SMBs, wherever they want to do business,” Irana Wasti, chief product officer at BILL, said in the release.

The total addressable market for payments and billing software for SMBs is large, as more businesses are looking to automate their financial operations, BILL CEO and founder René Lacerte said Feb. 8 during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

“There are millions of SMBs transacting trillions of dollars of payments using legacy methods,” Lacerte said.