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![\"MIKAELA](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4105957_web1_260331-Telpay-00116.jpg\")
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MIKAELA MACKENZIE \/ FREE PRESS<\/p>\n
Telpay chief experience officer Paul Vieira is the creator of the Shorty Awards-nominated Double Entry, a six-episode web series the company created to promote itself.<\/p>\n
The company, which is the largest independent processor of electronic bill payments in Canada, faces stiff competition in the category from global brands such as Amazon, Disney, Nasdaq and Visa.<\/p>\n
Paul Vieira, the marketing professional and Telpay executive who created Double Entry, said he\u2019s been flying high since he learned the series is up for a Shorty award, especially given there are entrants from all over the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just crazy \u2014 Telpay, this little company from Winnipeg, is up against these big brands,\u201d Vieira said. \u201cI\u2019m pretty pleased. This has been a pretty interesting and great experience so far.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 54-year-old\u2019s previous career background includes adult education and working in the provincial government\u2019s immigration department.<\/p>\n
More than a dozen years ago, he wrote and produced WindCity, a six-episode web series that took place in Winnipeg and showcased local businesses. (The Free Press was one of the series\u2019 two media sponsors and the official online home of its episodes when it debuted in 2014.)<\/p>\n
That experience led Vieira to work in film production for a few years before he took a communications and marketing role at Manitoba Public Insurance. <\/p>\n
He joined Telpay in 2024, where he oversees marketing, sales and customer relations as the company\u2019s chief experience officer.<\/p>\n
Vieira said he pitched Double Entry to Telpay leadership not long after joining the 40-year-old company.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like we needed to sort of re-establish ourselves as a beloved brand with our target segment: the bookkeeper,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve always said empathy is better marketing than advertising is, so we thought, what if we just told a story about them?\u201d<\/p>\n
Vieira spoke with bookkeepers to better understand the ins and outs of their profession. Those interviews informed the six episodes, which Vieira wrote over the course of six weeks last spring.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found that the profession was full of humour and humanity and a hidden sort of heroism,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach episode has a certain theme that we want to bring out that\u2019s fairly relevant to the bookkeeping profession \u2014 things like how to manage difficult clients, navigate technology, how to price your work, how to cope with deadlines and tax season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vieira hired local production company Foundation Film and Media to film the episodes on a shoestring budget in about a week last July. Each episode is around eight minutes long.<\/p>\n
Telpay debuted the trailer for Double Entry in September at Ignite, an annual conference hosted by the Certified Professional Bookkeepers of Canada, before making the entire series available online at telpayoriginals.com.<\/p>\n
The series reached more than 3,000 bookkeepers across the country within its first two months, Vieira said.<\/p>\n
Goals for the series included educating through entertainment and creating curiosity about Telpay without ever mentioning the brand in the series.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think about how innovative and pioneering our leadership is to actually put investment into something (where) we don\u2019t even talk about ourselves,\u201d Vieira said.<\/p>\n
Company president Mark Loewen said his first reaction to Vieira\u2019s pitch for the series was \u201csounds expensive,\u201d but he came around once he understood the goal was to build trust and emotional connection with bookkeepers.<\/p>\n
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He added he\u2019s proud of Double Entry and the award nomination, and multiple stakeholders were involved in producing the series.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people came together and worked really hard over the course of a couple weeks in the middle of the summer, and I\u2019m happy to see that all that effort is being recognized,\u201d Loewen said.<\/p>\n
The 18th annual Shorty Awards will be presented during a ceremony on May 19 in New York City. Telpay has given Vieira the green light to attend, but he said he\u2019s still deciding whether or not he\u2019ll make the trip.<\/p>\n
Telpay was founded in 1985 by Bill Loewen (Mark Loewen\u2019s great-uncle). The company employs around 80 people and processes $28 billion in transactions annually.<\/p>\n
aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca<\/p>\n
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Aaron Epp Aaron Epp reports on business for the Free Press. After freelancing for the paper for a decade, he joined the staff full-time in 2024. Read more about Aaron<\/a>.<\/p>\n Every piece of reporting Aaron produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print \u2014 part of the Free Press\u2018s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press\u2019s history and mandate<\/a>, and learn how our newsroom operates<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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