Fintech Insider Podcast by 11:FS
00:02:21 · David M. Brear, Nilan Peiris, Ben Johnson, S3, Craig Walker
So first, what we're gonna do, so with the the debate, what the debate is actually gonna be about is what is the most important element of cash flows to SMEs? Now, flow with SMEs is the most critical thing. Having run a small business for the last three and a half years, I can really testify to the fact that cash flow in all of its weird and wonderful geysers and everything that actually, the decisions that you need to be making on a day to day base format actually are the beating heart of an organization but we're gonna drill down into really what it is that is the most important thing when you're doing it, and we have four amazing teams to kind of debate that. But first, let's get on with the announcements and so let's get on with the news side of things. So first up, should we bring up the first story? [00:03:11] S1: Where do we stand next to each other? [00:03:12] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. It's it's awkward standing around [00:03:14] S2: these blints, isn't it? [00:03:15] S3: I have [00:03:16] S0: to say. You don't know quite where you [00:03:17] S1: put your cocktail party without the cocktails. [00:03:19] S0: It is. Yeah. Know. [00:03:19] S4: I mean Can I if we could at [00:03:21] S0: that stage get some sort of hors d'oeuvres, that would be fantastic? [00:03:24] S4: Can I answer the the debate already? It's payments. Has that has that ruined it?
00:03:24 · Craig Walker, David M. Brear, S3
[00:03:24] S4: Can I answer the the debate already? It's payments. Has that has that ruined it? [00:03:29] S0: We'll get into that shortly. Okay? It's it's nice to see people eager though. So I mean, first first story that we had today was zero pay partners with TransferWise for bill and reconciliation payments. So to tell us more about this, have Craig Walker who is the co founder and executive GM of payments and billing solutions at Xero. How's it going? Good. And also we have Nilan Perez who is the VP of growth at TransferWise. How's it going? Great. I mean, this seems like a pretty interesting deal here. So you've literally announced this today at Xero. Xero is making it easier for small businesses and their advisers to pay and reconcile UK bills on the platform. First domestic bill pay solution from TransferWise in The UK. Right? [00:04:09] S3: Yeah. [00:04:10] S0: Tell us a little bit more about it. What what does this mean and and why you're announcing it here?
00:04:10 · David M. Brear, Craig Walker
[00:04:10] S0: Tell us a little bit more about it. What what does this mean and and why you're announcing it here? [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.
00:04:14 · 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.