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DBS and Xero Extend Strategic Partnership by Simplifying Bill Payments for Small Businesses in Singapore

DBS Bank and Xero announced a service which allows small businesses, including start-ups and SMEs, to send payment instructions directly from Xero to their DBS IDEAL internet banking account, instead of entering them manually into their internet banking.

This new service marks the next step in the regional strategic partnership between DBS and Xero to enable small businesses to transform their financial processes using technology. By connecting the two platforms through a secure and real-time integration, small businesses can now both receive automatically imported bank transactions for easy bank reconciliation as well as streamline bill and supplier payments.

This connection between Xero and DBS supports one of Xero’s key areas of focus to advance high integrity accounting – making accurate and real-time financial data available to small business customers – and will be extended to allow small businesses to provide better financials for their future loan enquiries and ultimately open up access to debt capital for these businesses, faster and on better terms.

Previously, small businesses had to manually enter the payment details of a bill twice in order for it to be paid – in Xero for accounting and in DBS for payment. With the new API-driven banking service, payments can be initiated on Xero and approved through the bank’s corporate internet banking platform, DBS IDEAL.

Joyce Tee, Group Head of SME Banking, said,

Joyce Tee

“In the digital economy, SMEs will need to manage invoicing more efficiently as maintaining cash flow is the lifeblood of any business. It is our priority to ensure that our customers are equipped with the best financial management solutions to enable them to spend more time on growing their business and less time on administrative tasks like chasing for payments.”

Alex Campbell

“Small businesses all around the world, who adopt new technology and digitize the way they work to drive growth, now expect to manage cash flow and access capital in entirely new ways,”

commented Alex Campbell, Managing Director Asia at Xero.

“With DBS as the world’s leading digital bank, we have found the perfect partner for enabling small businesses to achieve exactly that across the Asia region.

This new payment service is another milestone in building our financial web, which is a network of trusted organisations and institutions sharing financial data securely with the purpose of helping our more than one million small business customers do business easier via Xero’s global platform and their banks.”

On average, small businesses in Singapore spend 15 hours per month on manually uploading bills or invoices to be paid into their banking software, which represents a huge productivity drain. With the new service from Xero and DBS, small businesses can automate this process and free up valuable time which they can spend on growing their business instead.

The new service is available from today to all Xero Singapore customers who have an active DBS Singapore bank feed using a DBS IDEAL account. The service is currently only available for bills in Singapore dollars.

Last year, DBS and Xero launched a bank feed – the first of its kind in Asia – which allows small business customers to integrate their financial data directly from their bank account into Xero, every day, automatically and in real time.

Featured image via Pixabay