NZ's Xero set to launch Xero Personal with BNZ for under NZ$5/mth

Rod Drury's accounting services firm Xero has announced plans to launch a personal version of its 'cloud computing' accounting programme that is currently sold to small to medium enterprises in New Zealand, Australia and Britain. Xero has a partnership with BNZ and has announced plans to launch it in early 2010. It is likely to cost less than NZ$5 a month, Xero said. Here is a video below explaining how it works. Here's what Xero founder Rod Drury said on his blog about Xero Personal.

One of the first reasons we looked at doing a personal edition is because many small business owners blur their personal and business expenses. Rewards points on credit cards are a good example of why this happens. So a key function of Xero Personal is to allow business owners to separate their personal and business expenses. Personal will work great on its own but it will also complement Xero Business. The second reason is because this space is a good opportunity "“ ripe for a new business model. Looking at the state of the personal finance software market it's undoubtedly becoming a hot space. A recent example is Intuit's recent $US170 million acquisition of Mint. Personal products generally fit into two camps.

In New Zealand Xero is partnering with the Bank of New Zealand (who is a fairly significant shareholder in the company) to deliver the application for a reported "less than $5 a month". What is really interesting is that the BNZ seems poised to market the product overseas, something of a rarity seeing a traditional bank branching out into new services in new markets.