275-Location ATM Portfolio, Duval County FL

$500K

SDE

3.5x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a Jacksonville-area ATM route business consisting of roughly 275 active machine placements spread across an established merchant network. The economics are simple: the operator installs terminals in convenience stores, bars, gas stations, and similar retail locations, then earns a surcharge on every withdrawal plus, in some cases, a share of the interchange. At scale, this converts into approximately $500,000 of annual cash flow at an asking price of $1,750,000, or a 3.5x multiple.

What is being sold here is not a hands-on route where the owner drives around loading cash. The listing is explicit that cash loading, servicing, maintenance coordination, vendor management, and reporting run through an established third-party management infrastructure. The buyer inherits the merchant relationships, the installed terminal fleet, the operating history, and the reporting systems, and is positioned as an investor or existing operator rolling this into a larger book rather than a solo route operator.

The ATM industry is highly fragmented, with most operators assembling portfolios one merchant at a time over many years. The pitch here is instant scale and diversification across hundreds of sites, which smooths out the risk of any single location closing or underperforming. The real questions for a buyer center on the true net economics after the management layer takes its cut, and how sticky those 275 merchant placements actually are.

Why we like it

The cash flow is genuinely diversified across roughly 275 placements, so no single location closing or a landlord dispute meaningfully dents the $500K. That granularity is a real form of downside protection that a concentrated route or a single-tenant business does not offer.
ATM surcharge revenue is durable and demand-inelastic at the transaction level. People pull cash from convenience stores, bars, and corner shops regardless of the macro cycle, and in a downturn cash usage among lower-income and unbanked customers can actually hold up or rise.
The model is truly passive as structured, with cash loading, servicing, and vendor management handled by an outside professional infrastructure. For a capital allocator this is close to a semi-financial asset rather than a job, which is exactly the kind of boring, hands-off cash flow worth compounding.
The industry is fragmented and the seller is retiring, which creates a clean roll-up angle. An existing ATM operator or a buyer with follow-on capital can bolt this onto a larger book and squeeze real synergies out of shared processing and cash logistics.

How to improve it

Run a location-by-location performance review in the first 90 days to identify the bottom decile of machines by transactions. Underperforming placements tie up cash-in-transit and service costs, and either renegotiating placement fees or pulling and redeploying those terminals lifts blended returns quickly.
Audit and optimize surcharge levels across the portfolio. Many operators leave money on the table with uniform pricing, and testing higher surcharges at high-traffic, low-alternative locations (bars, nightlife, tourist areas) can add margin with little churn risk.
Renegotiate the processing and cash-management contracts now that you control a 275-machine book. Volume gives you leverage to lower per-transaction processing costs and vaulting fees, and even a few cents per transaction across hundreds of machines compounds into real EBITDA.
Formalize and lengthen merchant placement agreements. If any of the 275 sites are on month-to-month or handshake terms, locking in multi-year contracts protects the cash flow and materially improves the resale multiple down the road.
Use existing merchant relationships to add net-new placements within the current footprint. Store owners with one ATM often own or know other locations, so a structured referral and expansion push grows the base without the cost of cold-sourcing new merchants.
Layer in value-added services where terminals allow, such as dynamic currency conversion or upgraded machines that support higher withdrawal limits. Selective equipment upgrades at your highest-volume sites can lift per-machine revenue and reduce downtime.
Build a simple monthly dashboard tracking cash flow per machine, downtime, and refill frequency so problem sites surface immediately. Tight operating visibility is what separates a passive asset that decays from one that quietly grows.

Diligence notes

Nail down the difference between gross surcharge collections and true net cash flow. Revenue is not disclosed, so you must build a bridge from transaction volume to the $500K after processing fees, cash-in-transit costs, the management infrastructure's cut, and merchant revenue splits before you trust the 3.5x.
Scrutinize the third-party management arrangement that makes this passive. Understand who owns that infrastructure, what it charges, whether the contract transfers on sale, and what happens to the whole thesis if that provider raises fees or walks away.
Verify merchant contract terms and churn history across the 275 sites. Ask for the tenure of each placement, how many merchants left in the last two years, and whether agreements are assignable, because a passive-looking book with month-to-month placements is far riskier than it appears.
Confirm ownership and condition of the terminal fleet and whether Windows/EMV compliance and ADA requirements are met. Aging machines that need mandatory software or hardware upgrades represent hidden capex that can eat a full year of cash flow.
Trace the source of the cash working capital used to load the machines. Understand how much cash is tied up in the float, whether it is included in the sale, and how it is financed, since this materially affects your real invested capital and returns.
Request 24 to 36 months of processor statements to validate the seasonality and trend of transaction volume. A retiring owner who has under-invested in placements may be handing you a gently declining book, so confirm the $500K is stable, not the peak of a fading route.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →