Merchant services encompass payment processing solutions that allow you to accept credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, and other electronic payment methods like Apple Pay^®. Whether you operate a retail shop, restaurant, professional services firm, or online eCommerce store, understanding merchant services is crucial for growing revenue, optimizing payment operations, managing costs, and protecting your business from financial risks. 

Merchant services success for your business demands ongoing attention and secure payment practices that not only protect you, but also your customers, your reputation, and our community. Businesses can transform payment processing into a strategic advantage by prioritizing regular review of processing costs, chargeback patterns, and security measures.

Key Benefits of Our Merchant Services

First Hawaiian Bank's local staff combined with national payment processing expertise offers the benefits of dependable, trusted local service and flexible modern technology that grow along with your specific business needs.

• More customers want to pay using chip cards, contactless payments, and mobile wallets. We have the payment solutions that can help you evolve to meet your customer’s needs, including loyalty and gift cards solutions.
• Our exceptional credit card processing services offer benefits such as fast funding for settled credit card batches with funds available as early as noon the next business day. 
• Gain peace of mind that we can help address major threats to your business; data breaches, fraud protection, PCI compliance and card data security. We have a program to assist you in meeting the PCI Security requirements and a Data Breach Assistance Program to help reduce risk and expenses resulting from a suspected or actual breach of credit card data, enabling you to focus on selling more and worrying less.
• When you need help and information, you want it now. We have a dedicated team ready to help you with questions and a 24/7 customer portal that has the payment data you need.
• Commerce Control Center^® helps uncover the hidden stories behind your sales data and customer spending patterns to grow sales, improve marketing efforts, and find new customers.

Mastering Disputes and Managing Chargebacks

A chargeback can occur when customers dispute transactions, which may result in payment reversal. The original purpose of the chargeback system is to protect consumers from unauthorized transactions resulting from stolen card information or account takeover. While chargebacks protect consumers, they can significantly impact business finances if not properly managed.

Understanding the various reasons behind chargebacks is essential for developing effective prevention strategies.

• Card-not-present fraud is particularly common in e-commerce transactions, where criminals use stolen card details to make unauthorized purchases.  
• Account takeover fraud involves hackers gaining access to customer accounts and using stored payment information to make fraudulent purchases.
• Friendly fraud includes both innocent mistakes, such as customers forgetting about purchases or not recognizing billing descriptors, and intentional abuse, where customers dispute legitimate transactions to avoid returns processes or recover funds while keeping products. Common friendly fraud scenarios include customers not recognizing charges on their statements due to unclear merchant descriptors, disputes arising from delivery problems or delays, and customers using chargebacks as an alternative to standard return procedures.
• Merchant errors represent another significant category of chargebacks that businesses can directly control. These include duplicate billing, processing errors, unclear billing descriptors, and issues with product or service delivery.

For fraud prevention, businesses should implement comprehensive fraud detection tools, verify customer information for high-risk transactions, and use address verification services. Clear communication with customers can prevent many friendly fraud chargebacks by ensuring customers understand what charges will appear on their statements, providing detailed order confirmations and shipping notifications, and maintaining easily accessible customer service channels.

Point-of-Sale (POS) Hardware

First Hawaiian Bank offers ready-to-go bundles that are perfectly suited for your type of business. For example, our retail point of sale system, Clover^® gives you the power to run your entire shop on a single smart platform. Manage your inventory, monitor critical stock levels, and accept payments at the touch of a button. Handle returns and exchanges, schedule staff, manage payroll, and track sales trends. All aimed to help you understand, engage, and service your customers better.

The Clover App Market offers many apps that you can download to your Clover device to expand and enhance its capabilities. You can choose apps to help with scheduling, inventory tracking, invoicing, and marketing.

Easier than ever to get started 

We provide assistance with installation, staff training, and have 24/7 customer service support. Plus track your businesses performance real-time, wherever and whenever you need with on-demand access to your vital sales data and key performance statistics through the Commerce Control Center® web portal and Clover dashboard. Reduce expenses through text or email customized receipts – no printer required.

Interested in learning more? Our First Hawaiian Bank bankers can help determine a solution to meet your business payment processing needs. Contact your First Hawaiian Bank banker or visit a branch to learn more about our Merchant Service solutions.

Apple Pay, Apple, and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc.
The Clover name, logo and related trademarks are owned by Clover Network, LLC.