Billionaire Shahin family takes stake in Perth payment fintech Bless

This article was published by the Australian Financial Review on 10th November 2025. Click here to read the article.

The billionaire founder of the OTR petrol station empire will back Perth-headquartered offshore payment fintech Bless Payments in a funding round that gives the start-up a valuation of around $40 million.

Over the last year, Charlie Shahin has been heavily investing the proceeds of the sale of the family’s service station and convenience store business to Viva Energy in a $1.2 billion deal in 2023. The investment in Bless Payments follows his $5.1 million investment in medical cannabis player Vitura Health earlier this year, as well as his acquisition of a 20 per cent stake in Adelaide-based software company Alpen Enterprises in March.

    Charlie Shahin and daughters (from left) Jasmin and Aya are looking for investments that make an impact

“For 41 years I stayed in one lane, so this is new territory,” Shahin said.

“We haven’t set a 10 per cent allocation or anything. In many ways [the investments] are driven by my four daughters – Amira, Taj, Aya, Jasmin – they consider initiatives, bring them to the table, and we discuss them objectively at a board level [Shahin, wife Kholoud and their daughters].

“Bless is an exciting opportunity. The guys are opening a Series A shortly … they’re launching in Canada and the UK and US are next.”

Bless Payments was founded by former Deloitte consulting principal Affy Bhatti, technologist Mo Zaatar and early investor Omair Chodhry in 2022, and is used by migrants sending money to their families in more than 60 countries, quickly and typically more cheaply than Western Union and Remitly.

Much like fintech unicorn Airwallex – which is backed by Chinese technology giant Tencent along with Square Peg, Airtree and Blackbird Ventures – it is also expanding into travel cards and a multi-currency wallet. But, it is focused on consumers, rather than the business market.

  Mo Zaatar, Affy Bhatti and Omair Chodhry teamed up to start offshore payments fintech Bless, which is making it cheaper    for migrants to send money back to their families

“We’re focused on the average punter,” Bhatti said. “Remittance is about $US6.5 billion ($10 billion) annually just for consumers, and about half goes to just 23 countries. The top four are China, England, India and Lebanon.”

In less than a year, Bless has grown to 1500 active users, and it’s aiming to have 8000 a year from now. In five years, it’s targeting 54,000.

For Shahin, a former refugee who came to Australia from Lebanon when he was 19, it’s an issue that strikes close to home.

“The fees are exorbitant. We’re so fortunate in Australia … but in some of the Third World countries, it’s people earning $70 per week who are paying 10 per cent of that to send their weekly wage home … it’s criminal,” Shahin said.

“We want to make money with Bless … but I’m okay with making less because you’re dealing with refugees trying to send money back home.”