1. Tell us about Xero and your mission to provide holistic financial services for small businesses.
Xero is a global small business platform used by millions of small businesses and their advisors to run their finances in the cloud — from accounting to payroll, payments, and analytics.
Our mission is to make life better for small businesses and the accountants and bookkeepers who support them by giving them time back, improving visibility, and helping them feel more confident in every financial decision.
We started in accounting, but today Xero is evolving into an AI-native financial operating system. With connected bank feeds, embedded bill payments, payroll, and more than 1,000 connected apps, small businesses authorize Xero to bring all their data into one place, and we turn it into actionable insights they can use, not just reports.
Under the hood, that experience is powered by Xero OS — the infrastructure for the next era of entrepreneurship — and JAX, your AI CFO, which together deliver always-on financial intelligence for small businesses and their advisors.
The goal is holistic: help small businesses manage money in and money out, stay cash-flow confident, and work more strategically with their advisors, all from a single, trusted hub.
2. Open banking and payments modernization are key policy priorities for Xero (and for us at FTA). Why do those issues matter to the customers you serve?
For small businesses, open banking and modern payments are not abstract policy debates — they determine how easily they can access their own financial data, move money, and get a clear, timely view of cash flow. This can make the difference between approval and rejection for businesses seeking capital at a critical growth point.
A well-designed open banking framework — with secure, standardized APIs and strong data rights — lets small businesses control who sees their data, how it’s used, and when access is revoked, while giving trusted platforms like Xero the ability to deliver faster reconciliation, more accurate forecasting, and easier access to services such as lending.
Payments modernization is the other half of the equation. The U.S. is the hub of global innovation, but we’re falling behind on building a modern payments infrastructure. Small businesses in the U.S. should have access to the same instant account-to-account payments and modern bill-pay rails that are widely available in other countries. These modernizations would allow small businesses to get paid faster, provide them with more visibility on their payments, and spend less time on manual accounts payable and receivable workflows, all areas Xero is investing heavily in the US.
Open banking and modern payments infrastructure are foundational to a healthier small business economy
3. Xero recently acquired Melio, a US-based payments platform. How will this acquisition help enhance Xero’s accounts payable and receivable capabilities?
Melio is central to how we’re reimagining money in and money out for US small businesses. By embedding Melio’s bill payments infrastructure directly into Xero, we’re providing a native, on-platform solution that brings bill capture, approvals, payment processing, and automatic reconciliation into a single workflow.
Instead of logging into multiple banking portals or third-party tools, customers can pay one or many bills at once in Xero, fund payments from a bank account or card, and have those payments automatically reconciled in the ledger by JAX, our AI financial superagent. That helps reclaim meaningful time (we expect customers to save up to 15 hours a month on bill pay tasks) while improving accuracy and control over cash flow.
Strategically, Melio deepens Xero’s role in the most critical parts of small business finances: cash in and cash out. It positions Xero as the only major US small business accounting platform that lets users pay bills by credit card directly on-platform, even when suppliers don’t accept cards, turning accounts payable from a manual cost center into a flexible lever for liquidity and growth.
4. We hear a lot about AI in the small business space. How is Xero using AI, and how does this technology help improve services for your customers?
For two decades, Xero has been the system of record for millions of small businesses across their financial operations. This deep understanding of our customers and the precision required when it comes to high-stakes financial decisions has fueled our ability to use AI to transform Xero into a system of action and deliver the automation, insights, and reimagined experiences that help small businesses and accountants manage and grow their business.
As an AI-native operating system, Xero OS and JAX (Just Ask Xero), our AI CFO, give our customers the power to orchestrate complex financial workflows across accounting, payroll, payments and tax, while keeping them firmly in control of the strategic decisions that will drive growth. This commitment is what we call “Accountable Intelligence” – where verifiable AI can handle routine tasks, surface actionable insights, and help small businesses and accountants focus on the tasks that require human judgment.
From smart document capture, to auto bank reconciliation to cash-flow forecasting and more — JAX is saving small businesses and advisors hours each week, helping them focus on the work that requires human judgment.
We’re also continuing to find new ways to give our customers more real-time financial intelligence and the ability to act on it. That’s why we recently announced a partnership with Anthropic, bringing Claude’s advanced reasoning into Xero and making Xero financial data available inside Claude.
5. We are celebrating Small Business Week this week (May 3-9). What is your message to Washington about how we can better support our nation’s small businesses?
Our message is simple: if small businesses are healthy, the wider economy is healthy. Our data shows businesses are under growing pressure even when parts of the economy are showing signs of resiliency. Recent Xero Small Business Insights data shows U.S. sales growth cooling, notably below long-term norms. There is, however, a bright spot in that late payment times have finally improved. This landscape presents policymakers with an opportunity to create laws, support programs, and initiatives that ground small businesses so they are well-positioned and equipped with digital tools and other support mechanisms to take on economic storms and uncertainty. We’re excited to see the conversations in DC around:
Modernize the financial plumbing. Advancing open banking, secure data-sharing rules, and real-time payments will give small businesses more control over their data, choice of providers, and faster, modernized ways to get paid and manage cash flow.
Making it easier — not harder — for small businesses to adopt digital tools. Targeted incentives, simplified compliance, digital identifiers/authenticators and programs that encourage accountants and bookkeepers to help clients move off paper and onto modern platforms can have outsized impact.
Thoughtful consideration of small businesses as Washington develops AI and payments regulation. We believe small businesses must be a key consideration as policymakers consider commonsense rules that protect consumers and small firms, while allowing the U.S. to continue as the global leader in innovation. Ensuring technologies like AI and embedded payments work for the smallest employers, not just the largest institutions, is the key to empowering Main Street with advanced AI technology. Small businesses need modern infrastructure and predictable rules that recognize the essential role they play in the U.S. economy.