In 1985, William Loewen had grown Comcheq to a national company with 22 branches stretching out across Canada. At the time, Canadians living remotely didn’t have a way to make their bill payments in a timely fashion. Bill payments weren’t available by phone and the internet didn’t exist so people had to mail cheques to their creditors; a slow process indeed.

Bill recognized the need for a better way to pay and thus, Telpay was born. This innovative, new technology gave Canadians the option to pay their bills quickly, conveniently, and in a way which they had never imagined possible; by phone. By 2004, Telpay had grown from telephone payments to electronic payments and continued to evolve into the all-in-one payment system it is today.

Pre-Authorized Debits (PADs) can be the most efficient and cost-effective way for consumers and businesses to make certain payments such as a mortgage, utility, membership dues, and insurance.

Payments Canada recently proposed several amendments to the Pre-Authorized Debits Rule, last reviewed in 2008. With the increasing level of technological advancements and market demands of Canadians who want greater flexibility and choice of Payment Service Providers (PSPs), Payments Canada is proposing changes to the PADs Rule to meet these evolving needs.

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One of your employees has informed you that they did not receive their payroll direct deposit. What happened? What will happen to the funds that you have sent them? There are several reasons why this employee may not have received their funds but the most common reason is they may have overlooked informing you of a change in their banking or personal information.

Here are some best practices that may help to reduce the risk of this happening to your employees.

Send Out Quarterly Reminders for Profile Updates

Sending out quarterly email reminders to employees with a read-receipt request allows them ample time to update their banking or personal information and will keep you in the loop as to who has read the email and who hasn’t for easier follow-up. Also, for security reasons, accepting a change of information via email is not recommended.

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Money laundering is big business in Canada.

In a recent report, the Criminal Intelligence Service estimated that between $45 billion and $113 billion is laundered through the country every year. As some analysts have noted, part of the reason for those big numbers is that Canada’s anti-money-laundering laws haven’t been that strong compared with other western nations. But that’s changing.

Last year, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) announced new anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing requirements. For Money Service Businesses like Telpay, these new rules mean that we have to ensure we know who our clients are. In accordance with these requirements, Telpay has been requesting personal information of primary users and signing officers, such as their date of birth and home address.

We know there are lots of questions about this. Why are we collecting this information? What are we going to do with it? What is a beneficial owner? Let’s get to some answers.

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We would like to congratulate and welcome Kevin Sokolowski as he assumes the role of President, here at Telpay!

Kevin has spent over two decades in development and operations roles at local and global organizations, including leading Development, Information Technology, Information Security, and Labs teams at Payworks. Kevin will be bringing his wide breadth of experience in innovation, security/privacy, and electronic payment processing and technology to our leadership team in this new role.

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