Online accounting vendor Xero has announced it has reached 50,000 paying business customers.

CEO Rod Drury made the announcement on the Xero blog, saying the scale is starting to work for the business.

"This is a mammoth achievement for the team and those, who like me, can remember it wasn't that long ago when we were scratching to get our first 1000 customers,” Drury writes.

"While the customer milestones keep rising, the speed at which we hit those numbers is accelerating.

Drury adds that the company has processed $50 billion in transactions since its launch four years ago.

"That blows even us away.

Read the full blog entry here.