To clarify how Yodlee based feeds will work – when we release this integrated feature our customers will be able to authorise a secure and automated Yodlee data aggregation service to access their bank accounts and retrieve statement data, which is then feed back into the bank account in Xero. The customer’s account credentials will only held securely on the Yodlee service and can only be updated or deleted by that customer.

The Yodlee data aggregation service can access the majority of accounts types offered by over 11,000 financial institutions and other account sources like loyalty accounts. However, the Yodlee based feeds will not replace the direct bank account feeds already available with the larger banks in NZ and Australian and the HSBC in the UK. We’ll be providing more details on the service closer to its release.

Hi Earl. When released, the Yodlee integration will provide feeds from around 30 Canadian banks including Royal Bank of Canada, CIBC and aslo Bank of Montral (who previously we have said was not covered). We are also discussing how we might extend our current direct feeds with the HSBC in the UK into other regions where HSBC operate, but nothing confirmed just yet.

@XeroFan. The Yodlee integration will provide access to credit card accounts, in addition to transactional accounts, for many of the financial institutions available through Yodlee. However, where we already have direct banks feeds we won’t have those banks available as a data source through Yodlee. Rather we are working on extending these feeds to cover credit card accounts as well. Drop me an email (alastair@xero.com) with details on which bank you have your credit card with and I can get your more details on the availability of these card feeds. Rgds, Alastair

Hi Harriet, Most major UK banks will be covered under the Yodlee based bank feed service. From the 3 you have listed, Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays are available, but Standard Chartered is not currently. We will look into if Standard Chartered is planned any time soon. Rgds Alastair

Hi Steffen,
Currently Yodlee connects to only around a dozen banks in Spain and France and unfortunately not PostFinance in Switzerland. We will register your interest in adding this bank and if we get enough requests we can have Yodlee look to add a connection to this source.
Rgds
Alastair

Hi Aaron.
Sorry for delayed response – Wells Fargo accounts will be available through Yodlee but not Gilmore Bank at this stage.
rgds
Alastair

Hi Trevor, pleased you are enjoying Xero. Yes, CIBC accounts will be available through the Yodlee service when this is released.

Hi Lou,
Yes, TD Canada Trust accounts will be available through our integration with Yodlee.
Alastair

Hi Jason,
Our first goal is to release the Yodlee integration with the Xero business app. Once complete we will certainly be looking at the option of extending this integration into Xero Personal. No firm plans or timeline yet sorry, but we will be providing more updates over the coming months.

Hi Michael, sorry for any confusion on this timing of this, but we expect to have Yodlee integration with US banks released during Q4 of this year. Your trial organisation will remain available for 180 days from the date you added it. You can start using Xero in advance of the Yodlee integration being released by manually importing bank statements if these are available for download from your bank.

Hi Frank. ING Direct accounts are available through the Yodlee service. However, it appears these accounts require multi-factor (two factor) authentication for online banking access, which unfortunately we won’t be supporting in our initial release. We are planning to extend the Yodlee integration to support for accounts with multi-factor authentication early in 2011. Sorry for the further delay this will cause for you.

@Jon, Thanks for your feedback and email to Xero support. We have investigated and can’t see any issues with connecting to Vanguard Bank from our side, but have asked Yodlee to also look into this. We’ll update you via email as soon as we know more.

@bryce Because of the large number of banks and account types involved and more been added all the time we don’t publish a bank list. The quickest way to check is to login to Xero and add a bank account for the bank(s) you are interested in to see if feeds are available. Bank of Queensland and Suncorp (Everyday Banking) bank accounts are both available.

@Niki There are 7 more major Canadian banks, including Royal Bank (RBC Financial Group), to be added once we release support for these and other banks globally that require Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) to access their Internet Banking sites. Sorry for the delays with this, the last phase of the Yodlee integration project, but we’re now looking to release MFA support in May.

Hi Pierre, Yodlee doesn’t provide feeds for Swiss PostFinance accounts and we are not aware of any plans for this to be added yet. Unfortunately we do not have enough customers with Swiss PostFinance accounts to raise the priority of this with Yodlee, but we’ll continue to track the demand for feeds from this and other major European financial institutions.

Hi Agustin, Thanks for the further feedback and great to see the interest you and others in Switzerland have in Xero. Unfortunately the priority given to establishing new bank feeds sources sits with Yodlee based on the demand they are seeing from across all their customers, but we will certainly pass on the interest in Swiss Post Finance being added their service. Regarding data storage location, the US provides an ideal location from which to host a global service and spread any network latency as evenly as possible between all customers. We are very mindful of data security concerns but are confident that we met or exceed all the requirements for data privacy and protection whilst maintaining an optimal solution from a technical hosting and operational perspective.

Hi Agustin, we don’t doubt the quality of Internet connectivity in Switzerland. However, hosting in the US represents the most central point in our worldwide customer base, especially from a global Internet traffic routing perspective, so any network latency is more evenly spread across all customers.

Yes, hosting Xero from the US does mean that customer data would have to be made available under the US Patriot Act if that business was suspected of supporting terrorism in any way. If a business has concerns about its activities from this perspective then we expect that they would choose not to use Xero and nor would we want them to!

Some countries also have regulations about where banks can store and process banking data and these may restrict their ability implement Yodlee base services for their own online offerings. But these banking regulations don’t extend to the bank’s customers or to other service providers like Xero and our accounting partners.

We’ve discussed establishing feeds from Swiss Post Finance with Yodlee, but unfortunately we don’t collectively have enough customers to make this a viable yet. We’re pleased you’re enjoying using Xero yourselves and keep spreading the good word as we’d love to have the scale of customers in Switzerland to add bank feeds there.