Embedded bill pay brings flexible, instant payment capabilities and real-time cashflow visibility to small businesses and their advisors, targeting $29B US payments market
Xero , the global small business platform, has launched online bill payments, enabling US small businesses to manage and pay bills directly from Xero. Xero’s acquisition of Melio and integration of its bill payments technology into its platform sets a new standard for the US market, with Xero now offering industry-leading flexibility and choice in how to pay. Notably, it is the only major US small business accounting platform now enabling users to pay bills by credit card on-platform. Xero’s acquisition of Melio targets a $29 billion US SMB payments market1 and makes significant strides in Xero’s 3×3 expansion strategy and US growth ambitions.
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Additionally, Melio CEO and co-founder Matan Bar has been named CEO of Xero US, with responsibility for both the Xero US and Melio businesses. These strategic developments underscore Xero’s commitment to providing a unified, AI-powered system of action and decision-making for customers that modernizes workflows and helps businesses run their entire daily operations with greater ease.
“Small business bill management has been highly fragmented,” said Diya Jolly, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Xero. “By embedding online bill payments into Xero, we’re closing the gap between bill payments and bookkeeping. Paired with JAX—our agentic AI platform—reconciliation is automatic, giving business owners a real-time, 360-view of their cash flow that is unmatched by standalone providers.”
More than 70% of US small businesses place high importance on having accounting and accounts payable software tightly integrated and Xero’s online bill payments, powered by Melio, eliminates friction by unifying bill management, payment and reconciliation in one automated workflow. Businesses and their advisors benefit from speed, choice, and cashflow visibility, with the ability to pay vendors instantly via bank transfer, debit or credit card—even if the vendor doesn’t accept cards—while JAX automatically reconciles transactions, keeping books accurate and enabling owners to shift from reporting on the past to forecasting for the future.
“The US payments landscape is uniquely complex but vital for small businesses,” said Matan Bar, Co-founder of Melio and CEO of Xero US. “Xero and Melio together replace slow, manual processes with a modern, scalable tech stack. By embedding flexible, self-serve workflows, we remove payment friction and streamline operations, saving business owners and their advisors time and optimizing cash flow to fuel confident growth.”
Building on the recent momentum of Xero expanding its global platform to include enterprise-grade analytics and the release of its agentic AI platform, JAX, the company is now delivering an embedded payments experience just months after closing the Melio acquisition. As Xero strengthens its full-stack financial operations platform for time-strapped small businesses, the US business continues to see strong momentum. In the first half of FY26, year-on-year US revenue growth increased; globally, H1 FY26 revenue increased 20% year-on-year to NZD $1.2 billion (approx. USD $0.7 billion).
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