Author: Julie Campbell

Soon, passengers on the railway networks across France will be able to use smartphones to pay for fare.

It has just been announced that the TGV trains in France will now be accepting mobile payments from passengers who will be able to use wireless systems to pay for their travel fare.

The railway operator, SNCF, in France, has adopted a state of the art transaction system compatible with wireless devices.

According to the latest news, the mobile payments system for the trains will use technology from VeriFone Systems, a tech firm from California. This will let a mobile device with the right app to be used to purchase railway tickets. The original deployment of handheld devices started back in April and by the time August is complete, it is believed that there will be 12,000 units deployed across the system.

The mobile payments system is comparable to ones that have been used in several other European countries.

The mobile payments devices being deployed across the world recognized high speed TGV trains in France will accept both domestic and international EMV card transactions. They will also be able to process the sale of the tickets and provide receipts and information services for the train riders. The gateway service at VeriFone collects and routes all forms of electronic transactions and also make it possible to use both the traditional type of card and contactless, smartphone, and online transactions.

According to the SNCF department director for train information systems, “VeriFone’s unique managed payment solution makes it possible for SNCF to further improve efficiency and productivity on our trains by adding on-board payment to our mobile solution.” She added that “Mobile payment further enhances passenger convenience and is a natural complement to existing capabilities of access to real-time information such as train schedules and seating availability.”

Similar mobile payments tools have been seen in other countries over the last few months, such as Turkey and Spain. Neither of these have used VeriFone technology, but they are proving to be popular among their passengers. Turkey’s service began in April, while the offering in Spain began in May.

The social media network’s revamped application has been increasing user engagement in a meaningful way.

According to the latest data from LinkedIn, the recent overhaul of its app has been extremely effective in increasing mobile marketing and overall engagement from users during the 2013 second quarter.

The result of this achievement is that there have been record revenue outcomes for the network.

According to the LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner, during the Q2 earnings call for the company, “Accelerated member growth and strong engagement drove record operating and financial results in the second quarter.” As of April of this year, LinkedIn had completely overhauled its mobile marketing and app experience for both iOS (Apple) and Android (Google).

Since the new mobile marketing and overall experience in the apps was created, engagement skyrocketed.

The company explained that the changed apps have produced a mobile marketing and homepage engagement rate that is 40 percent greater than it was before the overhaul of the app. Moreover, when compared to the results that were being generated by the earlier version of the social network’s application, the article views, social actions, and mobile profile edits have increased considerably.

Weiner commented last Thursday that “A more engaging mobile experience enhances the overall health of the LinkedIn platform.” Due to the successes of the apps and the engagement that it has generated, mobile has become the most rapidly growing service for that company.

At the same event, Weiner announced that in the second quarter, the average unique visiting members that were coming to the social network through the apps had averaged 33 percent. In 2012 at the same time, that figure had been 21 percent. This presents a considerably different mobile marketing opportunity for the company, as well as the chance to boost its revenues to a notable degree.

Assisted by stronger mobile marketing engagement, the revenue that LinkedIn saw over the second quarter for the year reached $363.7 million. This was a whopping 59 percent greater than the figure from a year before, which was $228.2 million. At the time of the writing of this article, there were approximately 238 professionals connecting through the network, across 200 nations and regions around the globe.