Xero to acquire Melio: A payments game-changer for small businesses across the US

For small businesses, we know that efficient, accurate, and seamless workflows are non-negotiable — especially when it comes to making payments. After all, paying bills and managing cash flow are two crucial tasks, and when managed effectively hand-in-hand, small businesses thrive. But these tasks shouldn’t be a manual headache. 

We also know that more than 70% of US SMBs place a high importance on having their accounting and accounts payable software tightly integrated, but only a small minority actually have access to integrated accounting and accounts payable.

That’s why we’re incredibly excited to share that Xero today announced its plans to acquire Melio, a leading SMB bill pay platform designed specifically for small businesses, accountants and bookkeepers in the US. 

This acquisition is a game-changer and will allow us to deliver an even more powerful and seamless experience to current and future Xero US customers across accounting, invoicing, bill pay and more, in a single integrated platform. 

Why Melio is a perfect fit for Xero customers now and in the future

Today, Melio is already loved and used by Xero customers through the Xero App Store as an app partner. Why? Because it transforms accounts payable from a time-consuming, manual chore into a seamless process. 

Melio’s powerful platform makes payment workflows easy and flexible, offering a wide choice of payment methods to suit the individual needs of each business, all while helping their vendors to get paid faster. Plus, with Melio’s robust approval workflows, customers will have greater visibility and control over every payment being made, helping them and their accountant to better manage their cash flow — a payment solution truly tailored to each business’s unique needs.  

Longer term, we know that bringing together accounting and payments seamlessly into one platform is a critical need for our customers. So we’ll be working hard to embed Melio’s full functionality within Xero to provide a seamless and fully integrated payment solution for both new and existing customers across the US. This means customers will be able to pay their bills without leaving the Xero platform, reducing the time spent manually replicating payments through multiple solutions and lowering the risk of human error. 

This isn’t just convenient — it’s transformational. 

We also believe in giving our customers the freedom to choose the tools that work best for them, recognising that diverse needs often require a variety of solutions. 

For existing Melio customers, we’ll continue to invest in Melio’s payments product as a standalone offering too, leveraging Xero’s go-to-market expertise to build on the great service and powerful features customers rely on today. 

The same applies for our ecosystem partners! We’ll continue to support other payment providers on our platform, just as we always have. This is what our open platform is all about — providing customers with a choice so they can use the software that best meets their specific needs.

We are deeply driven by our purpose to make life better for small businesses, their advisors and communities around the world. We can’t wait to bring this exciting vision to life and deliver even more powerful, integrated payment solutions to our customers.

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy 

Xero CEO