GoCardless & Xero: A beautiful business love story

Finding a great match isn’t easy. You have to have a good connection. It helps if your values align. You should bring out the best in each other. You need to see a future together. And ultimately, when you know, you know.

When GoCardless launched its first integration with small business cloud accounting platform Xero a few years ago, we knew it was the start of something big. We spent time making a great connection (with a seamless user experience) and we shared the same belief in beautiful business, in streamlining admin and giving small businesses more time back to focus on growth.

And when you put us together, we made more: our users were paid on time, while avoiding manual reconciliation and reducing accounting errors. They could manage payments and billing in once place, saving hours of time on admin.

GoCardless for Xero soon became one of Xero’s fastest growing apps in the UK app store, with 9,000 small businesses connected to it. In 2017, we were named Xero’s UK App Partner of the Year.

The good news is, we definitely see a future together. Xero has now confirmed its three global best-in-class solutions for Wallet, Cards and Direct Debit; and GoCardless is delighted to be the Direct Debit provider. Last month, we began to roll out the GoCardless app to Xero users in Australia, and this month we have gone live with Xero in New Zealand. As we continue to grow internationally, we’ll be working with Xero to solve the common problem of late payments in different countries around the world.

We have already started making improvements – Xero users can now connect to GoCardless from directly within the Xero product and we are working on new ways to support users to get the most out of the integration.

As our CEO and founder Hiroki puts it: “Our partnership with Xero in the UK has allowed us to bring our automatic payment solution into the billing workflows of thousands of small businesses, solving their cash flow challenges and taking away the pain of payment reconciliation. We’re thrilled to be taking our partnership to the next level and look forward to bringing our solution to Xero accountants and their small business customers around the world, starting with Australia.”

Xero businesses in Australia and New Zealand can now take payments through GoCardless, without leaving Xero. And one customer has already started: Kiril Shaginov, founder of speciality chocolate business, Mörk Chocolate, is the one of the first users of GoCardless for Xero in Australia.

Kiril tells us: "GoCardless has showed us just how much time can be saved on payments admin – as well as improving our cash flow. We first used it in the UK and we jumped at the chance to introduce it to our customers in our home market of Australia. It allows us to spend more time building relationships with our customers rather than focusing on the accounts."

You can read Kiril’s story here.