Xero Ltd (ASX: XRO) is partnering up with Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA).
To be precise, fintech company Waddle – Xero's subsidiary, acquired by the cloud accounting giant in October 2020 – is inking the partnership deal.
Here's why.
What partnership was announced?
CBA continues to march forward with its rapid pace of digitalisation and cloud migration.
And it's now enlisting Xero for the company's fintech knowhow.
In a release today, the bank reported on its new digital lending solution, Stream Working Capital, which is set to launch across Australia in October.
The program enables companies to use their outstanding invoice balances as loan securities to access new funds.
According to CBA, 55% of businesses surveyed currently considered invoice financing as a last resort. And 71% said they had "limited knowledge" about how it all worked.
The survey, conducted by House of Brand, polled 406 Aussie business owners and executives at the end of September.
Commenting on the new program, CommBank's executive general manager of business lending, Clare Morgan, said:
Stream Working Capital sees us effectively lending against invoices, so businesses are seeing credit limits adjust in real time based on the value of current outstanding invoices. As the solution is digital end-to-end and integrated with cloud based accounting software such as Xero, a lot of customer pain points are removed.
She said the turnaround time using Stream Working Capital was 72 hours, "compared to an industry standard of several weeks".
CBA said that partnering with Xero's Waddle would enable automation of much of the working capital finance process. That includes credit assessment, underwriting and monitoring.
Xero share price snapshot
The Xero share price is sliding today, down 3.9% at $133.85 in late afternoon trade.
It's not just Xero in the red today though. The S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) is down 0.4% at this same time.
And tech shares are having an even harder time of it, with the S&P/ASX All Technology Index (ASX: XTX) down 2.0%.
Xero's shares are up 16% over the past 12 months and down 9% over the last month.
