Bank services provider Bluevine is seeing improved customer experience and efficiency through deployment of AI. 

Chief Product Officer Herman Man told FinAi News Bluevine uses AI to provide its small and medium-sized business clients with:  

• Fraud monitoring;  

• Software development; 

  

• Customer assistance and servicing; and  

• Aiding the underwriting process.  

“We’re focused on deploying AI on tasks that are tangible and provide simple solutions for our customers that will make their day-to-day better,” Man said. “For instance, we deployed a customer service chatbot that resolved more than 80% of all customer complaints within minutes and without the need for the intervention of a support specialist. That sort of thing may seem basic, but it saves our customers precious time.” 

Bluevine launched the AI-driven chatbot, developed with Salesforce, in 2024. The tool tackled more than 23,000 of the 28,000 queries received each month and refers the remaining 5,000 to customer service representatives, on average, Man said. He declined to say how much the company had spent on the tool.  

“We historically used a traditional chatbot through the end of November, at which point we piloted an agentic AI bot via Salesforce (AgentForce),” Man said, adding that the company Launched traditional chatbot initially in August 2024. 

Bluevine switched to Decagon’s agentic AI bot on Jan. 5, he said. 

The company expects initial containment rates to be similar, with improvements as it expands chat capabilities and rolls out additional support over several months, he said. 

AI has made underwriting more efficient at Bluevine, Man said, adding that nearly 50% of all lending decisions are aided by AI, including automated decisioning and assisting a human during the underwriting process. 

Growing SMB market 

To support its growing SMB base, Bluevine plans to add more AI and gen AI tools in 2026, Man said. 

According to a Dec. 17 report by the company, 86% of SMBs have adopted gen AI tools within their operations. 

The numbers were culled from a Bluevine survey of 1,067 company owners, founders, partners, CEOs, presidents and managing directors of U.S. businesses with annual revenue between $50,000 and $5 million between Nov. 4, 2025, and Nov. 10, 2025. 

“We have seen a 58% year-over-year increase in Bluevine account applications for businesses in the tech space,” Man said. “It only follows logically that we will see AI-focused small business grow in the forthcoming years as AI continues to advance and proliferate.” 

For instance, business management was the fourth fastest growing industry for Bluevine with 65% YoY growth, Man said. Many of these businesses are management professionals who are helping other small businesses implement AI, he added. 

As the SMB segment grows, Bluevine plans to improve its AI tech in onboarding those businesses in 2026, Man said. 

Onboarding decisioning for Bluevine clients usually occurs in minutes and, once approved, the customer has instant access to their account, he said. 

Other AI use cases

“Regarding fraud, we use AI extensively including in onboarding and monitoring for suspicious transaction patterns that are typical of fraud,” Man said. “AI-aided fraud is becoming more rampant and sophisticated than ever — especially in ID and document domains — so it’s imperative that we use every tool at our disposal to stay ahead of fraudsters and build a sophisticated fraud detection program.” 

Bluevine plans to invest in tech in 2026 to improve its underwriting capabilities, improve its risk and fraud models, and enable customer-facing features that provide insights and recommended actions. 

The Jersey City, N.J.-based company is working on a gen AI-driven cash forecasting tool that it aims to launch this year, Man said. 

The company works with OpenAI for gen AI needs and is evaluating other gen AI models, he added. 

Register here by Jan. 16 for early bird pricing for the inaugural FinAi Banking Summit, taking place March 2-3 in Denver. View the full event agenda here.