Fintech Insider Podcast by 11:FS
00:04:14 · Craig Walker, David M. Brear
[00:04:14] S4: Yeah. So for the last few years, we've put a lot of investment in the ingestion of bills. So we've had bills management in Xero for a long time. It's about 7,000,000 bills that get processed in The UK every month, but we've never completed the the end of that, which is obviously the making of payments. So we talked a lot about today about the investments we've done with the acquisition of Hubdoc and the integration Hubdoc into our bills process, you know, our investments in AI and machine learning. But we really wanted to complete the end of that process, which is the actual making of a payment. Every small business, every business needs to process bills, needs to make payments. It's really slow and cumbersome to do that. You know, it's really hard, know, inconsistency between banks. Doing batches is hard. And so we just wanted to make it seamless like we try and do with every other part of our product. And so we partnered with TransferWise to deliver a domestic UK bill payment solution. So obviously TransferWise are known for the FX solution. But here they've they've helped us build out this this new pay with TransferWise feature, which is now integrated directly into our bill pay process. So you can easily set up a a... Set it up, connect your TransferWise account, and just start processing bills. It's really easy. And we've had some great feedback today from partners who are really excited about it. [00:05:43] S0: Cool. I mean, you guys have made a reputation of being sort of easy to integrate, you know. So is this a sort of a natural extension of that?
00:05:43 · David M. Brear, Nilan Peiris, S3
[00:05:43] S0: Cool. I mean, you guys have made a reputation of being sort of easy to integrate, you know. So is this a sort of a natural extension of that? [00:05:51] S1: Yeah. When we when we think about cross border payments and payments in general, we realized that not everyone in the world is gonna download our app. And we need to be where the payments are happening, either directly integrated into business, payment workflow, or with banks. And so today, I'm pleased to announce our integration into Xero, hot off the back of our partnership with GoCardless as well. And you can... You could see... We can imagine a world where 50% of the volume going through TransferWise is going... Is starting with the business and flowing seamlessly through that [00:06:27] S3: Yeah. [00:06:27] S1: Through their back end. [00:06:27] S0: And and what sort of impact do you think this will have then? Because obviously, do... Being able to do this, I mean, I'm... Again, I don't wanna make this as too much of a zero loving, but we're a zero customer. Thank you very from my perspective, being in a situation where we can do those things directly actually in it, just sort of changes that process quite dramatically. Right?
00:06:27 · David M. Brear, Craig Walker
[00:06:27] S0: And and what sort of impact do you think this will have then? Because obviously, do... Being able to do this, I mean, I'm... Again, I don't wanna make this as too much of a zero loving, but we're a zero customer. Thank you very from my perspective, being in a situation where we can do those things directly actually in it, just sort of changes that process quite dramatically. Right? [00:06:45] S4: It's all about giving you back time. And paying bills is... It can be a very time consuming process. We've... When when we ran research on on doing this bill pay solution here, We were talking to partners who were literally printing out a batch reconciliation report and going to... On the tube to actually tick it off. And, you know, we can literally save hours for for some of those processes. And remember, the bigger the business, the the more time consuming this is. So it just it just completes a workflow and makes it more seamless, gives you back time. So I'm hoping that we save you time. I'll let you know. [00:07:25] S0: How did it come about? Is it literally that simple? It's like customers said this is a problem that we needed to solve and therefore we solved it. [00:07:32] S4: So it's actually the... You said the third biggest. It was one of the top three... We ran some research and it was one of the top three things that customers said they wanted, which was being able to pay bills in Xero. So, yeah, this was coming directly from customers wanting us to have this feature.
00:07:32 · Craig Walker, David M. Brear, S3
[00:07:32] S4: So it's actually the... You said the third biggest. It was one of the top three... We ran some research and it was one of the top three things that customers said they wanted, which was being able to pay bills in Xero. So, yeah, this was coming directly from customers wanting us to have this feature. [00:07:50] S0: Fantastic. I mean, from your perspective, there's a benefit here as well. Right? It's a huge benefit from a consumer perspective, but actually doing more of that actually within the zero terminal is a benefit. Right? [00:08:01] S4: Yeah. I I think the the... There's benefits in kind of different guises. I think one for us is actually getting more bills information in. You know, we talked today... Actually, we're we're talking today about a cash flow insights product. One of the key ways to to understand cash flow is to actually understand your bills. And so having payments in there is just a natural way for you to think, well, I'm gonna get my bills in there so I can pay them. Well, now this actually helps me generate cash flow insights and really start to understand my business. Yeah. So it actually has flow on effects for our small business customers. [00:08:36] S0: Fantastic. Well, mean, on the... It seems weird. Congratulations on the partnership. It sound... Makes it feel like you've just got married, but it feels like that. So well, congratulations anyway. Thanks very much, guys. No worries. [00:08:47] S3: Cheers. Well done.
00:08:47 · S3, David M. Brear, S5, Lara Gilman, Lauren Harvey
[00:08:47] S3: Cheers. Well done. [00:08:52] S0: Okay. So next story that we have is iWalker and Xero working together to improve SME lending. So come to the stage guys. Give them a round of applause. So we have Ben Johnson who is payments and lending partnership lead at Xero, and we have Laura Gilman who is the chief product officer at iWalker. How's going, guys? [00:09:13] S5: Good. How are you? [00:09:14] S0: Yeah. Good. Very good. I mean, I'm [00:09:17] S6: How many is that? [00:09:18] S0: Three Beck's in now. So I'm doing I'm doing well. The debate is gonna be... I'm meant to be keeping order in the debate, we'll see what happens essentially. So so the announcement today then. So so in August, it was announced that Eyewoka were the recipients. So congratulations on you guys actually from a funding perspective. The... Everything that came to you from the remedies fund with RBS. Yeah. And it was a pretty big one. 10,000,000 on policy, which is pretty amazing. And I think one of one of the key parts with your commitments actually that were the public commitments that were made with it was about the open lending partnership with Xero. [00:09:52] S5: Absolutely. [00:09:53] S0: Tell us a little bit more about that. And actually, obviously, was six months ago now. Is that right? [00:09:58] S6: No. No. So we actually just got announced in [00:09:59] S5: in August. And so [00:10:01] S0: With the the remedies? [00:10:02] S6: With the remedies. [00:10:02] S7: Yeah. Exactly. And the the... [00:10:04] S6: We're kind of like... That was really a go live for us to really crack on.
00:10:04 · Lara Gilman, David M. Brear
[00:10:04] S6: We're kind of like... That was really a go live for us to really crack on. [00:10:06] S0: Yeah. So what what happened since? Congratulations. 10,000,000. Then what happened? [00:10:11] S6: Yeah. So what happened since is actually we kind of got to work. So this was obviously a core part of our commitments and and within our VCR application, were kind of excited about it because what it allowed us to do is really double down on new products but really also start thinking more about where... How can we make finance more accessible. So our kind of product ambition was bringing finance when, where, and how customers need it. And so open lending allowed... Made us realize that, you know, we really need to build on our technology, our infrastructure to to make it more contextual and more available. And so Xero is kind of the cornerstone partner to that and allows us... And basically we've kinda started doing that right away. [00:10:45] S0: Yeah. I mean, what does this mean from a a Xero context perspective?