Pinch Payments at First Class Accounts Conference 2026

The Pinch Payments team recently headed north to Cairns for the First Class Accounts (FCA) Conference 2026, bringing together franchisees, partners and members of the wider FCA community for a few days of conversations, learning and connection.
Representing Pinch Payments were Mikayla Corrie-Muller, Chloe Druery and Emily Emberson, who spent two days meeting attendees, catching up with familiar faces and sharing more about how Pinch supports businesses with smarter, more streamlined payment processes.
As a sponsor of the conference, Pinch was involved throughout the event, from conversations at the Pinch booth and the conference mixer to educational sessions and plenty of informal catch-ups.

Talking surcharging with the FCA community

With changes to surcharging continuing to be an important topic for Australian businesses, Chloe Druery and Emily Emberson took to the stage to discuss surcharging and what the upcoming changes mean for businesses.
The session provided an opportunity to share practical information with the FCA community and help businesses better understand how the evolving payments landscape may affect the way they accept payments from customers.
It was also a valuable chance for our team to hear directly from accountants and business owners about the questions they have and the challenges they are currently navigating.

An unexpected speaking opportunity

The conference also delivered an unexpected opportunity for Mikayla Corrie-Muller, who originally travelled to Cairns to capture content from the event.
After the first full day of the conference, Mikayla was invited to deliver a short talk at the conference dinner that evening.
Her seven-minute session focused on some of the lessons Pinch has learned from investing more heavily in content and social media over the past year.
She shared three simple ideas businesses can apply to their own content:

• Turn your clients' questions into content. If one person is asking a question, chances are others in your audience are thinking about it too.

• Put a person behind your business. People connect with people, and showing the individuals and expertise behind a brand can make content more relatable.

• Use AI to help you create more, while keeping the expertise human. AI can help speed up the content process, but it shouldn't replace the experience, perspective and personality that make content worth engaging with.

These are principles we've been putting into practice across Pinch's own marketing, helping us experiment with new formats, learn more about what our audience responds to and continue building our presence across social channels.

Connecting beyond the conference floor

One of the biggest benefits of events like the FCA Conference is simply having the opportunity to spend time together face-to-face.
Between the booth, mixer, conference sessions and dinner, our team had the chance to strengthen existing relationships, meet new people and hear directly from the businesses and professionals we work alongside.
A huge thank you to the First Class Accounts team for welcoming Pinch Payments and giving our team the opportunity to be part of the 2026 conference.