First UK bank feeds live
We’re pleased to announce that HSBC Bank has become the first UK-based bank to offer automated bank feeds into Xero.
This is a huge benefit for all our UK customers and partners as the bank feeds are one of Xero’s most innovative and loved features. Read about bank feeds here and how simple they are to set up – just go to our Help Centre to complete the HSBC Bank Authority Form.
There is a small monthly fee of £2.50 per account for using the automated service but it is FREE until 1 August 2009.
Here’s some customer comments about bank feeds:
Brilliant! I don’t know what I would do without Xero and the automatic bank feeds! I’ve just completed my first ever GST return in 2 minutes, I’m loving it!
Our bank accounts are automatically updated in Xero, which is extremely helpful for us when I’m travelling. With everything online, both Anne and I always know where things stand, even when we’re in opposite timezones.
Xero auto bank feeds are really handy and it is simple to use.
Check out www.xero.com it’s sensational, online and cool. Even links into your bank acct and processes your transactions.
As far as we can tell we’re the first online accounting service to have direct bank feeds to UK small business. Thank you HSBC for your help and support . We’re sure this is going to be a hit with our customers.
23 comments
Hank
This is great news. I never thought I’d see this innovation reach the UK so quickly. Kudos to HSBC for making this happen. I certainly will be making use of this.
alex
when the foreign currency version becomes available, will i be able to have hsbc bank feed come into my nz accounts ?
Hi Alex,
Yes, it will be possible for a UK HSBC bank account to feed into a GBP-currency bank account within the NZ version of Xero.
Cheers!
Kirk
Mark
Great work guys. A real milestone I suspect. Do you think other UK banks will follow? Can this be replicated in the US do you think, with so many local and regional banks?
Stuart Duncan
Please, please, please get the Clydesdale Bank to follow suit!
GT
GST in the UK ?
Hi Mark,
Yes. We are in active discussions with banks and other providers in both the UK and the US.
Thanks,
Alastair
Nice one! Its really great to see some of the ‘old world’ companies finally opening up to new concepts like these.
Darryl Collins
Great feature, but why is there a charge for it? If this is saving the bank the cost of issuing paper statements surely it should be free (or at least cheaper than £30 per year…
While bank feeds are certainly very convenient for Xero customers, banks do not see them as an outright replacement for customer bank statements.
The HSBC e-banking system being used to enable the bank feeds into Xero has a monthly transaction fee for each account included on the service. Unfortunately we are unable to absorb this fee under our pricing model and so have to pass it on at cost to the customers using the service.
The feedback has been very positive from HSBC customers who are looking forward to the convenience of getting their bank statement data loaded automatically into Xero.
I’ve been pestering our bank manager at Barclays about adding support for Xero. If others did the same I’m sure we’d see better support from our banks. It’s made me seriously consider opening an HSBC account…
[...] Get UK bank feeds – done [...]
Any chance we might see Abbey/Santander provide integration with Xero?
Hi Nathan, we hope to get other providers in the UK on board for automatic bank feeds. In the meantime as long as you can download your transactions in the format OFX, QIF or CSV you can import manually into Xero.
Paul Farmer
re: Alastair Grigg’s comment on 1 June 2009: Don’t let the banks have things their own way on this one, Xero. There are significant benefits to their developing and providing this kind of feed, and not just the ostensible benefit to their customers. Thousands of small businesses log on to their online banking systems at the start of every business day to discover whether any new payments have been received into their bank accounts, since the banks seem unwilling or incapable of providing this information via email daily. This constitutes a massive peak load on their servers, authentication systems and networks, one which could be significantly reduced and properly managed by providing this kind of bank feed. They should be falling over themselves to put this facility in place free of charge. I’m sure their senior management aren’t up to speed on this.
Paul – I totally agree. We bank with Lloyds TSB here in the UK and at peak times they disable most of the options for downloads, just leaving the basics operational. The reason? – because their server can’t cope (their pown admission). Now, if they gave us a live feed, we wouldn’t need to trouble their server too much would we?
Adam
From my dealings with UK banks I’m not surprised to hear that they lack the technological knowhow and resources required to provide something as simple as a feed.
It’s a bit passé for a Kiwi to talk about how awesome our banking system is compared to the rest of the world, but the UK banking system really is archaic.
Others certainly have tried and failed. Mint.com, for instance, still had to use their own Firefox extension to upload my HSBC feeds.
Somebody with the financial resources really could own the entire sector if they took some time to implement a user-centric bank.
Chris
Agree on LloydsTSB problems
When will we see new banks added to the list? I want to use Xero but Barclays isn’t available and therefore I may leave Xero all together!! 
Come on Guys and Girls!
Hi Will, it’s your bank you need to talk to. Helps us if they hear this from their customers. We are working with Barclays but they have a few things to do their end. We also hvae feeds from Yodlee coming mid year: http://blog.xero.com/2010/01/xero-and-yodlee/
Nice one! Its really great to see some of the ‘old world’ companies finally opening up to new concepts like these.