A Powerful FinTech That Helps Small Businesses Avoid Withering on the Vine

In a Nutshell: Having a banking relationship you can depend on can be an important factor in a small business’s success. But sometimes the best banking option for a small business isn’t a bank at all. Bluevine is a financial technology company that builds banking solutions for small businesses to help them grow and thrive.

We’re lucky to live in an age where we have so many options to fulfill our shopping needs. Once upon a time in the U.S., if you needed a new pair of shoes, your best bet was to head into town and see what was available at the general store. Then shopping malls and outlets sprang up with a vast inventory to suit our tastes and budgets.

And with the internet and online shopping, we have options galore. Sometimes, having so many choices makes it hard to make up our minds. 

Bluevine is a company that provides a business banking platform for small businesses. We spoke with Herman Man, Bluevine’s Chief Product Officer, to learn how the company develops solutions that can help a small business owner lead their organization to success. Man told us that Bluevine’s leadership team thinks of the company as a financial operating system for small businesses.

“If you think about what a small business needs, they really need a great checking account that they can use to house all their inbound and outgoing money and payments,” Man told us. “Up until this time, there hasn’t really been any banking provider that does this efficiently and targets the small business vertical and segments. Traditional banks favor commercial and consumer customers, but small businesses are unique — that’s why we’re here.”

Although I have a pretty good sense of what a small business is, I turned to the internet to see if I was missing anything. And what I discovered is that the definition of a small business can vary greatly from one source to another. 

Bluevine considers a business that generates less than $5 million in revenue per year to be a small business. Man told us that small businesses are an underbanked group, and they deserve to have a top-flight banking experience that rivals the service larger corporations receive from their banking partners.

Bluevine analyzes data and speaks with stakeholders to determine which solutions small businesses need the most.

“We do a lot of surveys and interview customers,” Man said. “Not only do we speak with them directly, but we’ll talk with indirect partners, like a business’s accountant, to better understand what their needs are and what the needs of their clients are. We continue to optimize our solutions and, in many cases, we see what we’re lacking and are proactive to go build it.”

Because Bluevine provides a business banking platform, it would be reasonable to think the company is a bank. But it isn’t — it’s a fintech. 

Fintechs use technology to deliver a range of financial products and services to customers. Man told us Bluevine works with a number of different sponsor banks to provide products to its customers, but the company cultivates relationships with the business owners it serves.

Bluevine employs some of the sharpest minds in the fintech arena all around the world. But Bluevine solely serves the U.S. market, which allows the company to focus on the issues that challenge U.S. business owners the most.

Bluevine serves new businesses and those that have been in operation for many years, but one thing many of its customers have in common is their dissatisfaction with their prior banking partners.

“We have a number of different customers that started with us from the beginning of incorporation and have stayed with us all the way to where they are today,” Man told us. “Some of our customers switched over to us from other fintechs, but we also have many who were just unhappy with their experience at big banks. Many big banks have legacy infrastructure and don’t design products and experiences with the small business in mind.”

Small business owners who want a banking partner that understands their needs may opt to bank with a smaller financial institution. Man told us many regional banks focus on supporting customers through their branch networks, but they offer outdated technology that can frustrate their clients and hinder opportunities for growth.

Bluevine aims to offer services that are so easy for customers to use, they don’t need to spend time on the phone with customer service teams or visit a branch to troubleshoot issues.

“When small businesses come to Bluevine, they quickly realize that this is what a banking experience should actually be like,” Man told us. “Our customers are just enamored with the experience we’ve purposely designed to suit the needs of small businesses.”

When you think back to your first experience with a bank, you most likely opened a checking account or enrolled in a savings program. From there, you probably opened a debit card and signed up for your bank’s online banking platform. Man told us that business customers often follow a similar approach.

Bluevine offers a business checking account customers can use as the operating account for their small business. Man told us that customers typically access an automated payment solution or open a lending product, such as a credit card or line of credit, after opening a checking account.

Lenders use a variety of underwriting techniques to judge the creditworthiness of a business or consumer. Man told us Bluevine uses a combination of different technologies to get a complete view of its small business customers and the likelihood they’ll pay back any loans or lines of credit the company issues them.

“We obviously use credit scores in underwriting, but cash flow is also a huge piece of what we want to view and base decisions on,” Man told us. “Having a business checking account with us is crucial because we know that data is fresh and doesn’t rely on secondary sources. We always prefer the ability to get real-time access to cash information so we can push opportunities for credit to customers when they’re available.”

Anyone who’s applied for credit with a traditional financial institution knows that it can be a time-consuming and tedious affair packed with gathering documentation and filling out forms. But Man told us that Bluevine uses a modern platform with automated systems to make lending decisions. It’s one more way Bluevine operates with the needs of its customers in mind.

“We use very sophisticated models when it comes to assessing lending circumstances,” Man told us. “It’s a very bespoke process, but a lot of it is what we’ve learned works over the years.”

Bluevine welcomes businesses from numerous industries to use its banking tools. Man told us that professional services and healthcare businesses, including doctors and dentists, often partner with the company. The company also helps construction businesses with financing to support ongoing projects.

Businesses invest a lot of energy into learning what their customers want. After all, if a business knows what’s on a customer’s mind, it can anticipate their needs and design solutions with those needs in mind. Many consulting firms have made a fortune helping businesses do just that.

But instead of making an educated guess about a customer’s plans, a business could just ask them. That’s what Bluevine does. The company surveys its customers and produces its BOSS report to highlight key findings of what’s on business owners’ minds. 

BOSS is an acronym for Business Owner Success Survey. Bluevine released its first BOSS report in early 2024. Its second report was published in September of this year. Man said the survey gives small business owners a platform to share what they’ve done to find success and what they’re envisioning for their business in the upcoming year.

“One of the most surprising things that we found with the survey is that just over half of small business owners use personal credit cards for their business expenses,” Man said. “We think there’s a lot of risk there for companies that are muddying up their financials with personal cards or mixing business and personal expenses.”

Bluevine offers businesses a credit card that rewards them with 1.5% cash back on each business purchase they make. Small business owners can issue Bluevine’s credit cards to their employees and set spending limits for each card from the company’s online dashboard.

As Man looks toward the future, he told us he’s excited for what it has in store for Bluevine and its customers.

“When you think about the power and simplicity of our platform, it’s hard to compare us to traditional banks,” Man said. “Business owners should only have to worry about running their business, not managing their banking and finances. We spend each day focused on that challenge.”