Exploring The Future of Global Payments

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The ability to seamlessly move money has always been at the core of our economy. It enables the exchange of value, makes it possible to build new businesses, and fuels long-term growth. It’s been with us, in one form or another, since the very beginning of civilization. In 9000 BC, people traded grain, cattle, and jewels. A generation ago, people relied on cash, cheques and paper invoices. Today, we have credit cards and mobile wallets such as Apple Pay.

The technology underpinning money movement has changed, but the fundamental needs of business owners have remained consistent. There are four key things that all business owners want to know: How much money do I have? Who do I owe? Who owes me? Am I making a profit?

At Xero, we’re always working to help our customers answer these four questions quickly and easily, so they can make informed decisions about what is right for the business. One of the most important ways we do that is by continuing to strengthen our open platform and partnering with leading companies enabling our customers to access all of their data in one place.

Xero + Stripe: Helping Businesses Get Paid Faster

One of our most important global partners is Stripe, an innovative technology company that provides online payments processing for internet businesses. Stripe’s mission is to grow the GDP of the internet and to help technology companies of every size build better and bigger businesses. The Stripe integration with Xero makes it easy for businesses to get paid faster because their customers can pay your invoices using their preferred credit or debit card. Find out how to add Stripe to your invoices here.

Last week, Xero’s Mary Buckley, Head of Financial Partnerships for the Americas, joined Jeanne DeWitt, Head of Sales at Stripe, to talk about the future of global payments on a panel at Stripe Sessions in San Francisco.

As Mary explained, “Xero’s primary focus has been to help small businesses understand how much money they have, what do they owe, what do others owe them and are they making a profit. Integrating with Stripe to help users manage payments, was a natural extension of our invoicing features to streamline the experience for business owners and their advisors.”

The Xero integration with Stripe provides small businesses with a way to send out invoices to their customers digitally, and offer the ability to pay via credit or debit card, or ACH credit. In doing so, a payer has more choice in how they make the payment and on average, merchants receive payments 10 days faster globally when a business uses Stripe. Xero automates reconciling any Stripe fees, saving time and money.

Stripe and Xero are committed to working together over the long-term to continuously improve the experience of their shared customers. As Stripe continues to invest in new product capabilities, Xero continues to explore new opportunities to deepen and expand the integration for the benefit of small businesses and their advisors.

Digital Payments Are Becoming a Baseline Customer Expectation

Digital payments are rapidly becoming the expected norm for all businesses. A recent Federal Reserve Study showed that while the use of commercial checks is declining by 3 percent annually, the use of card payments is growing by more than 7 percent each year. Even more importantly, the use of remote payments, such as those done over the internet, is increasing by nearly 16 percent, outpacing in-person payment growth of 8 percent. Another report shows that mobile payments have surged from 20 million users in 2015 to 144 million in 2017.

Xero is committed to working with partners like Stripe to make it easy for small businesses and their accountants to take advantage of leading edge payments technology. As Xero’s Mary Buckley puts it: “Our first job is to make it easy for businesses to adopt new payments technology. Doing so means that small businesses can get paid more quickly, and can unlock all insights that can come from payments data so that small businesses and their accountants can understand what’s happening inside their business and plan for long-term growth.”

By developing deeper customer and merchant experiences independently and in partnership, Xero is able to deliver an improved way of running a business, helping business owners to find deeper insights and more time to focus on the growth of their business.

Find out more about Stripe and Xero.

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