New Zealand based accountancy software provider Xero – a major competitor for the Sydney-based MYOB – says it has signed up 100 Australian financial institutions as it looks to make greater inroads into Australian small business.

Xero claims to be leveraging relationships with most Aussie banks to make it relatively easy for users to connect their accounting dashboard to accounts with most banks or financial services providers.

Its system is claimed to be able to connect to more than 95 percent of transaction accounts.

The company’s Australian MD Trent Innes has said that bringing the big banks and financial institutions on board is proving critical to Xero, which nowadays claims more than 500,000 customers – most of them said to be small-business operators – across the nation.

Xero has also announced this week that Ben Styles, formerly head of financial Web services, has been promoted to A/Pac general manager.