Xero has sent word that its first major release of the year is all done.

“The big news for our New Zealand and Australian customers is that we now support automated credit cards feeds for a number of key banks - no more manual statement imports, just take a few seconds to set up your feed and you'll be away,” the company’s release notes explained.

“You can now import manual journals via CSV; we've improved our PayPal integration; worked on our API and more - check out our release notes for all the details.”

Xero has also announced that Chris Ridd has joined as Managing Director for Xero in Australia.

In his first blog for the company, Ridd said, “I see the disruptive model that Xero has built challenging the old way of doing small business accounting by players such as MYOB and Quicken. I still have much to learn in this role but I am buoyed by my belief that the cloud will be an incredible shift for the industry.”