Pinch Payments: The Brisbane Business Paul Allen Built

By Paul Allen

The Pinch Payments company page on LinkedIn documents a Brisbane-based payments business that Paul Allen co-founded with Ben Cull in 2017. From its Queensland base, Pinch has grown into an…

The Pinch Payments company page on LinkedIn documents a Brisbane-based payments business that Paul Allen co-founded with Ben Cull in 2017. From its Queensland base, Pinch has grown into an established part of the Australian payments landscape, with Paul serving as Co-Founder and CEO.

The company helps businesses collect invoice payments through direct debit, credit cards and payment plans, with integrations into accounting platforms including Xero, QuickBooks and MYOB. It also operates a platform called Glassbox, which allows software providers to embed payment processing directly into their own products. That combination gives Pinch a dual role, serving both end merchants and the software companies that build on top of its infrastructure.

Pinch now processes direct debit, card and payment plan collections for thousands of Australian businesses. The company's scale drew the attention of Fiserv, which announced its acquisition of Pinch Payments in April 2025. At that point, Pinch served merchants across both Australia and New Zealand. Paul's LinkedIn profile lists his current title as Director of Pinch Payments, a Fiserv company, reflecting the business's new position within a larger global payments group.

On joining Fiserv, Paul said it was an incredible opportunity for the Pinch team, one that furthers its mission to provide seamless partner experiences to a growing number of merchants. He expressed confidence in the roadmap to expand into new markets, framing the acquisition as a continuation rather than a conclusion of the work the company set out to do.

That forward focus continues to shape how Paul talks about the sector. He sees payments as one of the few parts of a tech stack where a small team can genuinely ship something meaningful in a week, because the hard infrastructure problems are already solved. It is a perspective that underpins both the Glassbox platform and Pinch's wider ambition to make payments something founders can build on rather than wrestle with.