Local card use rose 5.6% last quarter

A strong economy is increasing the appetite of Hawaii residents.

With unemployment at a seven-year low and payroll jobs at an all-time high, consumers didn’t hesitate to whip out their credit and debit cards during the third quarter as sales at supermarkets open at least a year jumped 28.6 percent, according to the First Hawaiian Bank Business Activity Report due to be released today. It was the largest increase ever for the sector dating back to when the bank began producing its reports in 2010.

Overall, credit and debit card activity rose 5.6 percent last quarter as the bank processed $814.3 million in transactions from its merchants. The increase marked the 23rd consecutive quarter of growth since the inception of the report.

“It’s surprising how well supermarkets did,” First Hawaiian Chairman and CEO Bob Harrison said. “What’s encouraging is that supermarkets are a great broad-based look at consumer spending. Much of that is local spend. So when you have that local spend and people spending at the 28 percent level, that’s surprising how strong it is, but it’s encouraging at the same time. I don’t know if we’ll continue to see that kind of spend — that’s unusually high — but I think it’s great to see it as an indicator of a broad-based general consumer confidence.”

Supermarkets topped the list for the second time this year and achieved double-digit growth for the fifth consecutive quarter. It also was the second time in the history of the report that the supermarket sector posted a gain of more than 20 percent. The last time supermarkets reached that level was in the first quarter of 2012.

On Hawaii island, Burke Matsuyama, president of Matsuyama Food Mart and Matsuyama Market, said the two 6,000-square-foot, family-owned stores in Kona increased credit and debit card sales volume about 20 percent during the quarter. Matsuyama Food Mart has been in business since 1981, while Matsuyama Market opened in 2007. Burke’s wife, Karen, and their four sons, Alex, Chad, Jason and Ross, help with the operations.

“The oldest store is located within a residential community, and the market is in an industrial area that has high visibility to the major Queen Kaahumanu Highway,” Matsuyama said. “That’s basically the difference between the target markets. One is more residential, and the other is more industrial and motorist (oriented).”

Matsuyma likens his two stores to a superette — “in between a 7-Eleven and a supermarket,” he said.

“We specialize in food primarily. We have the local plate lunch, sushi, pizza and sandwiches. We have the whole array of food products, like poke, that people come in to purchase either for lunch or to take home for dinner.”

He said business for his two stores has picked up likely due to construction in the area. Matsuyama said the additional activity has resulted in him hiring one or two additional people for his overall workforce of about 40 employees.

“The general consensus is that construction has improved so much in the Kona area that what’s driving the increase in sales is from construction workers,” Matsuyama said. “They naturally have more disposable income than workers in the services industry. I think that’s really a critical factor why business is experiencing the quality of growth that we’re seeing.”

Matsuyama Food Mart, which was started in 1981 by Burke’s late father, Hiroshi, also offers gas service that can accommodate six vehicles at one time.

“That really helps a lot,” Matsuyama said. “It drives sales into the store. Gas can be something that brings the customer to the site, so you have a second opportunity to have grocery sales just by the fact that they’re at the location and it’s very convenient for them to do two things at once — to buy gas and groceries.”

While the 5.6 percent increase in overall card transactions among the 16 sectors represented the smallest third-quarter gain since the report’s inception, Harrison said it was still “a very respectable number.”

“We had seen very strong growth for a long time, and if the (U.S.) economy is growing at 2 to 2.5 percent, which we’re seeing in the GDP (gross domestic product) number, and consumer spending (as reflected in the bank’s report) is growing at 5 to 6 percent, that’s still twice what the overall growth is. That’s an indicator of consumer confidence.”

First Hawaiian, which is the largest bank in Hawaii with $18.9 billion in assets, is able to monitor broad economic activity in the state through its card processing services because it is the islands’ largest local processor of debit and credit card transactions. The bank has nearly 7,000 merchants in its network, with most of those in the state.

There were more big gainers besides supermarkets among the 16 sectors tracked by the bank. Sales in the shipping sector soared 24.7 percent, utilities/communications jumped 17.7 percent, convenience stores increased 12.5 percent and home improvement gained 10 percent. The percentage increases by the shipping and the utilities/communications sectors were the largest ever for a third quarter since the inception of the report.

Despite the state remaining on pace for its fourth straight record year of visitor arrivals and spending, that trend was muted in the report as hotels, which had the highest dollar volume of $154 million, saw card sales rise just 3 percent while retail sales slumped 2.8 percent. The decrease in retail card sales wasn’t entirely surprising, though, because of a weak yen that saw spending by Japanese visitors, Hawaii’s largest international market, decline 9.8 percent through the first eight months of this year, according to Hawaii Tourism Authority data.

The popularity of online shopping also has taken away business from some local merchants. First Hawaiian’s report does not include online purchases such as through Amazon.com, but does include online sales if the merchant has e-commerce and has its card processing set up through the bank.

Besides retail, there also were decreases in medical services (1.9 percent), insurance (2.7 percent) and travel agencies (7.4 percent).