Building a Fintech Empire: How Paul Alex is Revolutionizing Merchant Automation

5 May 2025 · 13 min

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Podcast Summary: Earn Your Leisure - Building a Fintech Empire with Paul Alex

Episode Overview In this episode, host Troy Millings interviews Paul Alex, a fintech entrepreneur who has innovated in the merchant automation and ATM sectors. Paul shares his journey from law enforcement to creating a multi-million dollar business, focusing on empowering others to achieve financial independence through merchant services.

Key Concepts and Discussions

Paul Alex's Journey

  • Transitioned from law enforcement to entrepreneurship.
  • Established a successful fintech business focused on merchant automation and ATM services.

Fintech Approach

  • Merchant Automation and ATM Business: Paul emphasizes the importance of these services in the current fintech landscape.
  • Cash Discount Programs: He explains how these programs can benefit both customers and businesses by reducing credit card processing fees.

Income Opportunities

  • Passive and Proactive Income: Paul outlines how entrepreneurs can create sustainable income through his business model.
  • Empowerment through Education: He highlights the significance of mentorship and education in helping others succeed in fintech.

Partnerships and Networking

  • Big Blue Ocean Opportunity: Paul discusses the vast potential for growth in the merchant services industry, especially among younger entrepreneurs who are not yet part of the market.
  • Importance of Networking: He believes that building a strong network can significantly enhance one's financial opportunities.

Future Vision

  • Plans to scale the business to serve not just small local businesses but also larger venues like sports arenas.
  • Emphasis on helping entrepreneurs achieve financial freedom before pursuing larger accounts.

Success Stories

  • Paul shares inspiring stories of mentees who have drastically changed their lives through his program, including a construction business owner who scaled to 40 accounts in seven months.

Key Takeaways

  • Market Demand: Less than 5% of businesses in the U.S. currently utilize cash discount programs, indicating a substantial opportunity for growth.
  • Focus on Education and Mentorship: Paul stresses that teaching entrepreneurs about the business can lead to higher success rates.
  • Long-term Sustainability: The model allows for long-lasting income streams, encouraging individuals to quit their nine-to-five jobs.

Conclusion This episode provides actionable insights for aspiring entrepreneurs interested in fintech and merchant services. Paul Alex's story and strategies illustrate the potential for financial empowerment through innovative business practices and strong mentorship.

Hashtags

  • #Fintech
  • #Entrepreneurship
  • #MerchantAutomation
  • #DigitalMarketing
  • #PassiveIncome
  • #BusinessGrowth
  • #FinancialFreedom
  • #EYL
  • #PaulAlex
  • #ATMBusiness
  • #Mentorship
  • #CashDiscountProgram
  • #Networking
  • #Innovation
  • #SmallBusiness

Sponsors

  • PNC Bank: Emphasizing the importance of calculated financial decisions.
  • Square: A platform designed to help businesses manage payments and inventory effectively.

This episode serves as a rich resource for anyone looking to enter fintech or understanding the mechanics of merchant automation businesses. Paul Alex's vision and enthusiasm for helping others underscores the transformative potential of this industry.

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0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-iHeart. Hey, it's Joel. And Matt. From HowToMoney. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high. And the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress.

0:35That's right. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?

1:05I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:54our merch partners square makes it easy for them to take payments manage inventory and run their business with confidence all from one simple system if you're a business owner or even just thinking about launching something soon square is hands down one of the best tools out there to help you start run and grow it's not just about payments it's about giving you time back so you can focus on what matters most ready to see how square can transform your business visit square.com backslash go backslash EYL to learn more. That's square.com backslash go backslash EYL. Don't wait, don't hesitate. Let Square handle the back end so you can keep pushing your vision forward.

2:40This episode is brought to you by PNC Bank. A lot of people think podcasts about work are boring, and sure, they definitely can be. But understanding a professional's routine shows us how they achieve their success little by little, day after day. It's like banking with PNC Bank. It might seem boring to save, plan, and make calculated decisions with your bank, but keeping your money boring is what helps you live a more happily fulfilled life. PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865. Brilliantly boring since 1865 is a service mark of the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc. PNC Bank, National Association, member FDIC.

3:22When you got the ATMs, you got merchant automation, it feels like these are fintech companies in a sense, right? So when I think fintech, I think valuation. And I think if we umbrella, it becomes a holding company for a larger vision where it's now this is a fintech company who can now come and at one point maybe package this up and sell it. Is that on the vision board? And then back to that part where you're saying the vision, it's like, all right, I got 4 ,000 people that trust me. I teach them the skill. Is there a percentage inside there that now is a kickback because you're giving them locations?

3:59Correct. Okay. Yeah. That's good, man. You know what you're doing. Okay. But yes, it comes. Here's the thing. Somebody who doesn't have the experience in business, when you first start off, let's be honest, a lot of people are agreed. They're going to be like, I want it all myself. And I was like that too back in my nightclub promotion days, which is why it didn't last, right? So at the end of the day, when it comes down to, I'd rather partner up with somebody who knows what they're doing and give them a percentage. The reason why, because I know that they're going to do good business by me because it also affects their business.

4:38So that's exactly what we do. We essentially will start them up, okay? Where we set them up with everything, whether they're a proactive entrepreneur or whether you're more of a passive investor. Okay. Just really depends on time. How much time do you have to invest into starting this business? And I have the same conversation with the driver, but it goes into, if you have, let's say roughly four to five hours a week, and you're willing to go ahead and sit through what we call weekly clinics with my partners, where we'll actually teach you hands on, man, how to go ahead and sell this. Because I feel that everybody in this country knows at least 10 businesses that they could approach and ask a very simple question.

5:22Do you pay credit card processing fees? And less than 5 % of businesses in the United States right now are using cash discount program. So probably going to be a high percentage that that person is going to say yes. Okay. So in business, we call this big blue ocean. There's a massive opportunity for a lot of people and people are not catching this on yet because everybody that does merchant services, guess what? They're baby boomers. They're people that have been in the game for so long, dude, that they haven't integrated digital marketing. So now that I've met guys that have been in the game for 20 years and I'm basically the face, I am their partners and I'm more into using marketing.

6:06I'm now exposing this technique because I see it as an opportunity to team up with entrepreneurs and even 95ers that are looking to invest into something sustainable but then also willing to get mentored by us because it's a partnership and if we're able to get hundreds of people in every single state oh dude yeah valuation is going to go up sounds like fintech but I'm going to be very honest with you guys I'm never going to retire and I know a lot of people are like bullshit like no you're gonna retire no I'm never gonna retire it's just in me dude I've always been a worker like with me it's just working smarter not harder you know um I have back injuries from law enforcement dude like it's just I it wore it wore me down bro just seven years in that city it was crazy but now I work smarter so what I'm trying to build is I'm in the next stage of my life man I just got married dude so now I'm looking into making some kids.

7:02I want like three, four kids with my wife. Even my wife, she's like, babe, I want to launch like a consulting program for women that need help finding like their true love of their life. And I'm like, hell yeah, let's do it. You know, I have the resources. Like I know what to do. Like it's in my head. Let's, let's rock. And that's what I'm really trying to do, man. I'm really trying to build things that I'm passionate about. And this is, this is one of them. Merchant automation is one of them because it's already changed the lives of dozens of my mentees, dude. Like I have so many stories. If you guys go either on my website or on my Instagram, that's what I promote the most.

7:39I don't even promote what I have. I could care what I have. It's more about them. It's about the transformation of what we're doing for people. So to give you a great example, I did another podcast with another podcaster and I have brought one of my mentees who dramatically changed his life, dude. Within seven months, this guy went from owning a construction company, okay, in Colorado. And he has a wife, he has two kids. And he gave his first chance with us because of our social proof, our results. And he talked to one of our prior clients and he went all in, dude. And he went all in. And within seven months, he was able to scale to 40 accounts.

8:20And I asked him, I interviewed him in front of my audience. and I was like, hey man, how was it possible that you went to 40 accounts without having like a massive team like me? And he goes and he says, the product sells itself. It truly does. Because you think about it, what are the cons behind it? The objections that we've gotten is, well, what if my clients don't want to pay their own convenience fee to use their credit card, right? But when you think about it, that only gets into effect if they're doing high ticket. Let's say you're buying a nice watch. Watch is like$90 ,000. Now you've got to pay 4 % of that.

9:00More than likely, that's not going to be your ideal client. You want to go for actual customers like businesses that people use every day. Breakfast cafe shops, coffee shops, food trucks, convenience stores, bodegas. What is it? Auto repair shops. things that have high volume of transactions those are the best businesses to deploy this exact strategy because they're paying a very small percentage and the volume you got to think about it like this you're getting paid per swipe so the more volume it has the better it is for your business because it's not going to affect the actual client buying the service or the product and that's what i always tell people i mean right now we have over a thousand accounts that we've signed up under our umbrella in the past year.

9:46And it works. We don't get no kickback as far as just like, hey, I don't want your machine. I don't want your service here. No, people love it. Because it's saving the business owners, 10s to hundreds of 1000s of dollars. And the people that were helping get into this business, it's making them a lot of residuals where they're able to quit their nine to five. And they're also able to focus on this growing residual income that's going to last them a lifetime, man. It's a beautiful thing. How large scale can you grow these accounts? Obviously, bodegas, grocery stores, that makes sense. Are you looking at sporting venues, large scale accounts like that, arenas, where you're talking about 20 ,000 people coming in?

10:24You're talking about 100 ,000 people. If you're at College Saturday, you go to your arenas, you're talking about 110 ,000, you're Ohio State. Can it grow that large scale? It can. It can. That's the future. Okay. That's the future, man. We literally just started a little bit over a year. And within 60 days, I did it as a one-man startup. And we were already a million-dollar company within 60 days. Cash collected. It was amazing. But the reason why is because we started with that push behind the current clientele that we had. They believed in us. They believed in my vision when I presented it to them.

11:03And I was just like, hey guys, you know, this is the vision I have for this new company. This is the great opportunity that I believe that I'm investing in for my family. So it's like, think about it. If you were able to invest into Uber in the very beginning, the humble beginnings of Uber or Amazon, this could go that big. It really can. with the right management, with the right belief and the right culture of employees that we do have. I truly believe that just because I'm leading that. And that's why I've been able to go ahead and hire CEOs for the rest of my businesses, because I want to go all in on this one because of that belief.

11:41Right. But to go into what you were just saying is I think that's the future, but not now. The reason why I want to focus on helping hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs first, accomplish true financial freedom through this. And then we can focus. I'm pretty sure throughout those hundreds of thousands of mentees or agents that we do get, there's probably going to be a handful of people that are already going to have the connections because I'm a true believer in our network, right? Your network can truly change your net worth. So what's going to end up happening is we're probably going to get one or two people that have such a humongous network that they're going to be like, dude, I can present this to my people and I could get all these accounts for myself.

12:27And that's what's happening already. We're getting a few people like top affiliate companies that work with like Russell Brunson, for example, that they're like, hey, dude, we have over 200 basically foot soldiers all over the East Coast that can go ahead and present this to accounts. He's like, how can we set it up with your business where essentially we could do a partnership you do the training you do the deployment of the terminals you find the location and you just direct our 200 affiliates and i'll pay them you know whatever i get from my residuals and i was like yeah dude let's do it so that's something that we're working on for later on this year but do you see like the opportunity is huge man i'm sure you guys have a huge network you know huge network that you're probably thinking right now you're like bro i know so many restaurant owners that can use this because it's going to save them a ton of money.

13:19And then on the back end, it's going to make you guys a lot of money on residuals. An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child in Massachusetts. An MS-13 gang member from El Salvador accused of murdering a Texas man. A Venezuelan charged with filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President Donald J. Trump's leadership. I'm Kristi Noem, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over 100 ,000 illegal aliens have been arrested.

13:56If you are here illegally, you're next. You will be fined nearly$1 ,000 a day, imprisoned and deported. You will never return. But if you register using our CBP Home app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally. Do what's right. Leave now. Under President Trump, America's laws, border, and families will be protected. Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security. Hey, it's Joel and Matt from HowToMoney. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress.

14:37That's right. Yeah. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?

15:08I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Dr. Jesse Mills, host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, men promise to get stronger, work harder, and fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? I sat down with psychologist Dr. Steve Poulter to unpack shame, anxiety, and the emotional pain men were never taught how to name.

15:50Part of the way through the valley of despair is realizing this has happened, and you have to make a choice whether you're going to stay in it or move forward. Our two-part conversation is available now. Listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.

From the publisher

In this insightful clip from EYL, host Troy Millings sits down with Paul Alex, entrepreneur and fintech innovator, to discuss how Paul is disrupting the merchant automation and ATM space. Paul shares his inspiring journey, from his humble beginnings in law enforcement to creating a multi-million dollar business helping others achieve financial freedom.


Paul breaks down the foundation of his fintech approach—focusing on ATM businesses and merchant services, and empowering entrepreneurs to leverage cash discount programs. Discover how Paul’s strategies provide both passive and proactive income opportunities, allowing anyone willing to learn to build lasting, residual income.


Throughout the conversation, Paul emphasizes the importance of partnership, mentorship, and the “big blue ocean” opportunity for those looking to break into the fintech space. He discusses the future vision of scaling his company from helping small businesses like cafes and bodegas, to potentially servicing massive venues such as sports arenas. Paul also shares real success stories, including clients who transformed their businesses and lives by joining his program.


If you’re interested in fintech, automation, and building sustainable income streams, this clip is packed with actionable insights. Paul’s passion for empowering others shines as he outlines the steps to get started, the benefits for both business owners and entrepreneurs, and the long-term vision for growth and impact in the industry.


Don’t miss out on this deep dive into the world of merchant services, digital marketing, and the power of networks in building a fintech empire. Whether you’re seeking financial freedom or new business opportunities, this conversation could be your first step towards success.


*Hashtags:*

#Fintech #Entrepreneurship #MerchantAutomation #DigitalMarketing #PassiveIncome #BusinessGrowth #FinancialFreedom #EYL #PaulAlex #ATMBusiness #Mentorship #CashDiscountProgram #Networking #Innovation #SmallBusiness Success



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