$10 a month. That is the only recurring expense on most of Johnny Giani's ATMs. Not $100. Not $500. Ten dollars — for the internet box that keeps the machine connected. Everything else — the location, the cash, the surcharge — just runs. He has 83 of them.
Giani started in 2018 as a full-time police officer who had just sold a rental property after his tenants stopped paying during COVID. He was looking for something boring that people actually used. He found it at a gas station — not the gas, not the lottery tickets, but the ATM in the corner that a stranger in a pickup truck came to fill every week. That detail stuck with him.
Three and a half years later, he left the police force. Today he runs $35,000 a month from a laptop at a coffee shop, with ATMs spread across Florida, New York, and Connecticut. His grandma thinks he's unemployed.
This is a breakdown of how the business actually works — the numbers, the problems they don't tell you about upfront, and the one thing that determines whether this scales or stalls.
What the ATM Business Model Actually Is
Most people assume ATMs are owned by banks. Most of them aren't. The machine at your local nail salon, barbershop, or gas station almost certainly belongs to an independent operator — someone who placed it there, loads cash into it, and collects the surcharge fee every time someone makes a withdrawal.
The mechanics are simple. You buy a machine, place it in a business, load it with your own cash, and set a surcharge — typically $3 to $4 per transaction. When a customer withdraws $100, they pay $104. That $4 is yours. The $100 gets debited from the customer's bank account and returned to your account within 24 to 48 hours. Your cash is just recycling. You're not spending it — you're lending it temporarily and collecting a fee each time it moves.
The business owner hosting the machine usually gets nothing or a small cut — typically 50 cents to $1 per transaction. Their incentive isn't the cut. It's that an ATM increases foot traffic, keeps customers from leaving to find cash elsewhere, and reduces their credit card processing fees when customers pay cash instead of card. Giani frames the pitch exactly this way: he's not asking for a favor, he's offering to save the owner money.
The cash itself is the "inventory" — and it's an inventory that never goes bad, never needs to be restocked from a supplier, and never expires. Giani compared it to selling shovels while everyone else chases gold. It's not a metaphor he invented, but it fits.
The Real Numbers: What One Machine Makes
Giani's range is wide, and that's honest. His lowest-performing machines bring in about $150 a month. His highest — an ATV rental location in what he calls "the middle of the sticks" — does $3,000 to $5,000 depending on the season. Most of his machines sit somewhere in between.
His barbershop location, which he uses as his "realistic baseline" example, does $350 a month. Expenses: $10 for the internet box. Net profit: $340. The machine cost $2,800. At $340 a month, that's paid off in a little over eight months — and then it just runs.
The Connecticut convenience store is more instructive for understanding scale. It does $1,000 a month. It's 2,000 miles from where Giani lives in Florida. He pays a loader $1 per transaction — at 250 transactions a month, that's $250. Plus $10 for internet. Net: $740 a month. Hands off. He never goes near it.
Monthly Numbers: Three Location Types
| Location Type | Gross/Month | Expenses | Net Profit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barbershop (local) | $350 | $10 (internet) | $340 |
| Convenience store (remote, with loader) | $1,000 | $260 ($250 loader + $10 internet) | $740 |
| ATV rental (high season) | $5,000 | ~$10–50 | ~$4,950 |
Source: Johnny Giani interview. Numbers from his actual locations as shared publicly.
Industry data from ATM operators suggests that owners running 5 to 10 machines can expect roughly $1,500 to $2,000 monthly in profit — which aligns with Giani's early-stage numbers before he hit 83 machines. At scale, the math compounds. 83 machines averaging even $400 net each is $33,200 a month. That's how he's at $35,000.
Startup Cost Breakdown: What You Actually Need
Giani breaks it down to six categories. Total to get started: around $6,000. Here's how that splits out.
The machine itself runs about $2,800. The internet box is another $200. LLC and EIN filing fees — which vary by state but he estimates at roughly $1,000 — come next. Equipment like a dolly, drill, and basic tools add another $1,000. Then you need cash to load into the machine. He says $1,000 is the minimum to start, though $2,000 is more comfortable. All in: $6,000.
Every subsequent machine after the first costs about $3,000 — the equipment only, since you've already handled the LLC and tools. The cash to load it comes from surcharge revenue you've already collected.
Industry estimates from ATM operators place total first-machine costs at $6,000 to $10,000 when factoring in a buffer for vault cash , which matches Giani's numbers closely. His first barbershop machine paid for itself in nine months. The ATV location paid back within a month.
One thing he mentions that most people overlook: the machine cost and the vault cash are not equivalent investments. The machine is a depreciating asset you own. The vault cash is just your own money sitting in a different pocket — it comes back every time someone makes a withdrawal. You're not losing it. You're parking it temporarily.
Finding Locations: The Part Everyone Gets Wrong
Most people starting out try to think big — nightclubs, casinos, events. Giani's actual first advice is the opposite. Start with the businesses you already go to. Your barbershop. Your nail salon. Your wife's nail salon. These work for two reasons: you already have a relationship with the owner, and you already know the business has cash-paying customers.
The pitch isn't complicated. An ATM brings in foot traffic, reduces credit card processing fees, and adds a cash option without the owner doing anything. Giani says he's never had to be a salesperson — the machine sells itself once you explain those three points.
For hesitant owners, he offers a 30-day trial with no contracts. He's never had an owner ask him to pull the machine after the trial. Once a business sees foot traffic improve and credit card fee receipts drop, removing the ATM stops making sense.
His best location discovery is worth telling: the ATV rental spot came from being a customer there. He noticed the owner was taking deposits via Cash App and dealing with chargebacks constantly — people would flip ATVs, file disputes, and the owner would eat the loss. Giani pitched going cash-only with an ATM handling deposits. The owner agreed. The machine now makes $3,000 to $5,000 a month depending on season. His wife suggested it. He almost skipped it.
He also talks about what he calls "parasite locations" — not in a negative sense, but places that benefit from neighboring businesses. His barbershop location isn't just servicing the 20+ barbers. There's a cash-only auto tag agency next door that drives consistent traffic to the plaza. He tried to get into the auto tag agency first, got laughed off, and placed the machine in the barbershop instead. He gets the spillover anyway.
The Banking Problem Nobody Warns You About
Here's the thing the YouTube thumbnails and "passive income" threads don't mention: getting a bank account for an ATM business is harder than getting the locations.
Most major banks — Chase, Wells Fargo — won't work with independent ATM operators for two reasons. One, they run their own ATM networks and aren't interested in funding a competitor. Two, ATM businesses have historically been associated with money laundering, so compliance departments flag them. This has nothing to do with you being suspicious. It's a blanket policy.
Giani's advice: go to smaller regional banks. Be completely transparent upfront about what the business is. And make clear that an ATM business is not an MSB — a Money Services Business like a check-cashing operation. Banks often conflate the two because their compliance teams don't distinguish between them. The key distinction: you're not taking deposits. You're only doing withdrawals, like a vending machine. That framing helps.
He also mentioned bringing donuts to his bankers. It's a small thing, but in a relationship-dependent business where your bank can freeze your account at will, being the person they like matters. He writes it off as a business expense.
How It Scales: Loaders, Routes, and Remote ATMs
The business becomes genuinely passive when you introduce loaders — people who fill your machines with their own cash in exchange for $1 per transaction. They're not using your money. They put their own savings into your machine, the surcharge fees hit your account, they get paid per transaction, and they get their principal back as customers withdraw. Their incentive is a better return on idle cash than a savings account. Giani's first loaders in Connecticut were firefighters who worked 24-hour shifts and had long stretches of downtime.
This is how he runs ATMs in New York and Connecticut from Florida. He owns the location contract. Someone else handles the cash. He keeps $3 of a $4 surcharge, they keep $1. At 250 transactions a month, that's $250 to the loader and $750 to him — for a machine he never touches.
The app does the rest. He can see every transaction in real time, how many bills are in each cassette, and which machines are running low. It tells him when to order more cash and calculates how long current inventory will last. He checks it over coffee. When a machine needs maintenance — a bill jam, for instance — he gets an alert, and either addresses it himself or sends someone local.
Scaling from one machine to 83 took him three and a half years. He replaced his police officer income somewhere along the way. His method was conservative: add one or two locations a month, move slow performers until you find what works, go for quality over quantity once you know what a good location looks like. He's still adding machines.
Additional Revenue Streams Beyond the Surcharge
The surcharge is the main income. But Giani runs three other revenue streams off the same machines, and they're worth understanding.
Screen advertising is the simplest. ATM screens display idle content when not in use. Local realtors, restaurants, and small businesses will pay around $50 a month to run ads on a machine with consistent foot traffic. He sells this through local Facebook groups, framing it as a foot traffic audience. A few screens across multiple machines can add a few hundred dollars a month with almost no effort.
The second is crypto sales via a free software called Liberty X. Customers can buy crypto directly from the ATM using their debit card — no additional hardware required. He makes a percentage on each transaction. It's not his biggest revenue stream, but it costs nothing to enable.
The third is credit card cash advances. When someone uses a credit card at an ATM (rather than a debit card), it counts as a cash advance and carries a higher fee — sometimes $5 to $10 per transaction, versus $3 to $4 for debit. Giani doesn't chase this one, but it adds up in locations where people habitually use credit cards.
He also runs a percentage-based surcharge model at high-volume locations. Instead of a flat $4 fee, he sets the ATM to charge 2% of whatever is withdrawn. At a nightclub where someone pulls $500, that's a $10 fee. The ATM calculates it automatically. Average ATM surcharges in the US hit $4.73 in 2023 , so percentage-based fees at high-dollar withdrawal locations are meaningfully above average.
The Exit: ATM Routes Sell for 24–36x Monthly Revenue
This is the detail that doesn't get enough attention. ATM routes — the combination of machines, location contracts, and loader relationships — are a sellable asset. They trade at 24 to 36 times their monthly revenue.
A route generating $5,000 a month in net profit sells for $120,000 to $180,000. Giani's full operation at $35,000 a month would theoretically be worth $840,000 to $1.26 million. He's not selling — but the point is that this isn't just monthly income. Every machine he adds is also adding to an asset he could eventually exit with a multiple.
Buyers like these routes because they're recession-resistant, cash-based, and already loaded. You can verify the transaction history, see exactly what each location generates, and start collecting surcharges on day one. It's closer to buying a small real estate portfolio than buying a business that depends on someone's relationships or skills to keep running.
What I Learned From This Startup Story
The most interesting thing about this story isn't the ATM business. It's the search process that led to it. Giani says he was specifically looking for something boring that people actually used. That's a more useful filter than almost anything else I've heard from people trying to start a business. Most people reverse it — they look for something exciting, then try to find a market for it. He started with consistent human behavior (people need cash at gas stations, barbers, nightclubs) and worked backwards to the business model.
The banking problem is worth sitting with. He's more candid about it than most people in this space. The fact that major banks refuse to work with ATM operators is a real operational hurdle, not a minor paperwork step. It's also a competitive moat in disguise — the difficulty of banking filters out people who aren't serious enough to figure it out. The operators who stay in the business long enough to build 83 machines are the ones who solved the banking problem early and built relationships with regional banks before they needed them urgently.
The thing that doesn't show up in the numbers is how slowly this actually built. Three and a half years to replace a police officer's income is not a fast business. It's one or two locations a month, moving slow machines, reinvesting surcharge revenue into the next machine. The $35,000 month is a result of 83 machines and eight years of operation — not a discovery that happened and then scaled. Anyone framing this as a quick passive income play is missing how long the compounding actually takes.
One uncomfortable truth: the ATV location — his highest performer — came from his wife's suggestion on a location he had already decided to skip. He has a whole framework for evaluating locations, and he almost ignored the best one he has. That's worth noting not as a cute anecdote but as a reminder that the best opportunities in boring businesses often look wrong at first glance. The ATV place was in the middle of nowhere. There was no competing ATM. The demand for cash was structural, not optional. He almost missed it because it didn't look like a good location from the outside.
FAQ
How much does it actually cost to start an ATM business?
Giani's first-machine startup cost was around $6,000 — $2,800 for the machine, $200 for the internet box, roughly $1,000 for LLC setup, $1,000 for tools and equipment, and $1,000 in vault cash to load the machine. Each machine after the first costs about $3,000, since you've already handled the LLC and tools. The vault cash isn't a loss — it's your own money cycling through the machine and returning to your account as customers withdraw.
What's the typical monthly profit from a single ATM?
It varies significantly by location. Giani's range is $150 a month on the low end to $5,000 on the high end. A typical barbershop or nail salon location does around $300 to $400 net after the $10 monthly internet cost. Industry estimates put net profit per machine in steady locations at $200 to $700 per month after expenses and revenue share . High-traffic locations like nightclubs, events, or specialty venues can significantly exceed that.
Why won't big banks work with ATM operators?
Two reasons. First, major banks operate their own ATM networks and don't want to fund competition. Second, compliance teams historically flagged ATM businesses as money laundering risks and the blanket restriction stuck. The solution is smaller regional banks, full transparency about what your business does, and clearly distinguishing yourself from money service businesses like check-cashing operations.
Is this business threatened by digital payments and crypto?
It's a legitimate question. Cash use is declining in aggregate, but it's not declining evenly. Nightclubs, barbers, nail salons, ATV rentals, food trucks, and cash-only businesses are not going card-only anytime soon — the operational reasons for preferring cash (chargeback avoidance, tip culture, processing fees) are structural, not habitual. Giani has heard the crypto argument since 2018. His business has grown every year since.
How long does it take to replace a full-time income with ATMs?
Giani did it in three and a half years, adding one to two locations a month. He was conservative — moving slow machines, reinvesting surcharge revenue, avoiding overextension. The math isn't complicated: at $300 to $400 net per machine, you need roughly 15 to 20 machines to replace a $5,000 to $6,000 monthly income. Getting to 15 machines while working a full-time job takes time, not genius.
What are the best locations to target for an ATM?
Giani's practical starting point: businesses you already go to, where you know the owner and know the customers use cash. Beyond that, look for cash demand that is structural — places where people regularly need cash for tips (barbers, nail salons), cover charges (nightclubs), or because the business prefers or requires it. High foot traffic matters, but Giani's best machine is in a rural ATV rental spot that barely looks like a good location from the outside.
The boring businesses category keeps producing stories like this one. Pest control, wood rot repair, window cleaning — the pattern shows up repeatedly. These businesses share a few structural features: low overhead, consistent demand, no fashion cycle, and a customer base that has no loyalty to any particular provider. ATMs fit that template exactly. The machine doesn't care if it's 2018 or 2026. People still need cash at 11pm at a barber shop in Connecticut.
If you're looking at other businesses with similar characteristics — low startup cost, minimal ongoing expenses, movable assets — the 2026 business ideas breakdown covers several that share the same structural logic. The common thread isn't the industry. It's that the demand is boring, consistent, and not going away.