This year marks the 100th anniversary of National Forest Week celebrated at the end of September, just when the trees are showing their most glorious colours across our country. Forests are places of sanctuary and tranquility, even in recent times gaining their own therapeutic practice known as “Forest Bathing” – simply breathing in the clean air and reconnecting with nature.

The Telpay Trees Fall Campaign saw another 5,000 trees planned and planted. Alongside the mighty Red River in the heart of Winnipeg, our staff team met for the first time since March. Wearing our masks and physically distancing, we extended the existing tree line with a mix of local trees and berries. Our founder Bill Loewen, having recently celebrated his 90th birthday, dared to join us at the gathering taking distancing precautions seriously. We planted an apple tree there in his honour.

At a special ceremony on National Tree Day, Telpay CEO Cora Jalonen announced our planting a Fruit and Berry Forest in partnership with one of our customers, the Neeginan Aboriginal Centre at their downtown Main Street location. Joined by Mayor Brian Bowman and former parliamentarian, business-owner, and longstanding Tree Canada Board Member Dorothy Dobbie, we ceremonially planted 6 fruit trees and announced our intention to plant over 100 fruit and berry bushes in the Spring of 2020 with the help of Falk Nurseries. Continue reading →

It is with mixed emotions that today we announce the retirement of Telpay’s Founder and President, W.H. (Bill) Loewen.

For over 50 years, Bill Loewen has transformed and revolutionized the way individuals and businesses send and receive payments. Mr. Loewen changed how people got paid with Canada’s first independent payroll service company, Comcheq. Also, he introduced Canadians to electronic payments by telephone in 1985 with Telpay.

Having established an enviably solid foundation, he leaves a legacy of innovation, depth of knowledge, and industry advocacy that ensures Telpay is well-positioned to continue providing innovative payment solutions.

With a plan to transition into the future, we also announce today that Telpay has been acquired by a Winnipeg ownership group with controlling interests in Payworks, a cloud-based workforce management solution. This ownership group is committed to investing in technology to further solidify and elevate Telpay as Canada’s electronic payments leader.

Throughout this changeover, Telpay will continue to operate independently to focus on what we do best – delivering value for you and your business with efficient, cost-effective payment solutions.

Telpay’s office will stay where it all began in Winnipeg. Our team’s unwavering dedication to providing exceptional products and services to our customers and partners remain resolute. We are excited about joining forces with the new ownership group to help take Telpay into the next chapter of growth and innovation.

For additional information, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@telpay.ca.

On behalf of the management and staff, we thank you for your continued support!

Regards,

Cora Jalonen, CPA, CGA, CIA
CEO

As the wise saying goes, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is now! That holds true even during a global pandemic. As part of Winnipeg’s One Million Tree Challenge, Telpay staff, customers, and friends planted 5000 trees this spring.

While all plans for public plantings were put on hold due to COVID, we reached out to you, our customers. And the response was resounding from individuals planting in their own yards, to staff giveaways to whole community tree giveaways. In partnership with one of our customers, the Dakota Community Club, we gave away 500 trees in just two hours! We were so pleased to have so many of you interested in this project.

We’d love to help stimulate this kind of tree planting across the country. Check out Tree Canada to get involved in their national tree planting program.

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Winnipeg’s vast tree canopy is a source of great pride for many Winnipeggers, but it’s under threat.

The Emerald Ash Borer Beetle and Dutch Elm Disease alone is expected to take out two-thirds of the city’s public tree canopy over the next century. If something’s not done — and soon — all of that life that all of those trees breathe into Winnipeg’s neighbourhoods will be snuffed out.

That’s why, in September, Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman announced a bold vision to protect and expand the city’s tree canopy. Called the Million Tree Challenge, it asks individuals, not-for-profits, and private businesses to come together to plant one million new trees across the city over the next 20 years.

In December 2019, Telpay answered the call and made a $250,000 commitment to the Million Tree Challenge which includes public tree plantings. There were public plantings scheduled for 2020 however due to the pandemic it forced those events to be delayed, so instead we’re offering Winnipeg business affiliates free trees to plant themselves. One of those affiliates is the Dakota Community Centre, which will receive 250 trees.

“We are very excited that through this initiative, more trees will be coming to our site and into our community,” says Michele Augert, CEO of the DCC. “It is through such meaningful partnerships that we are able to continue to enhance our spaces and the places people in our community come to live, play, and gather.”

This is just one green initiative among many for the DCC, however. In 2017, for instance, the community hub opened a 60,000 square foot fieldhouse that is LEED Silver certified. And in 2018, it became a Telpay for Business customer, doing away with issuing 200 paper cheques each month to vendors, instructors, referees, timekeepers, and ice technicians.

Eliminating those cheques and going with an electronic payment solution like Telpay’s is no small environmental idea, by the way. One estimate by the PayItGreen Alliance suggests that paper cheques add 3.6 million tonnes of greenhouses gases to the environment every year. Telpay estimates that by eliminating the paper cheques of over 100,000 businesses across Canada, our electronic system has saved the equivalent of a mature 80,000 tree forest.

But like the DCC, Telpay’s electronic payment system is just one of our many green initiatives. This January we enacted a Green Action Plan that includes making office operations even more sustainable, retrofitting our historic building in downtown Winnipeg, and participating in the Million Tree Challenge.

Visit info.telpay.ca/greenactionplan for all of the details on the Green Action Plan or contact us directly at 1-800-665-0302 or sales@telpay.ca to find out how switching to Telpay can help your business reduce its environmental footprint.