RIM is reported to be mulling the addition of NFC support to its BlackBerry devices in the near future, with Jim Balsillie (pictured), the company’s Co-CEO, stating that “I don’t comment on future products but we’d be fools not to have it in the near term… and we’re not fools.” NFC World notes that in a Web 2.0 Summit 2010 interview, Balsillie made a number of references to the relationship between banks and operators in the m-commerce space, on more than one occasion noting that the “wise” person opts to align with banks on NFC and payments – “but there’s more than one way to approach these things.” RIM already offers an application called BlackBerry Wallet, which enables customers to store credit card information and loyalty card details on the handset, which could conceivably be extended to provide payment features.

The comments come at a time when NFC technology is gaining momentum, with recent reports indicating that Google is intending to include m-commerce support in the planned Nexus S device and future versions of the Android platform. Nokia is also expected to widely embrace NFC in its product line in the near future, while Apple is also believed to be exploring the technology for a future iPhone evolution. Today, NXP Semiconductors partnered with Gemalto to integrate the former’s MIFARE contactless transaction technology with is UICC cards, enabling support for MIFARE deployments which include public transport ticketing services in Argentina, Turkey, Russia, and the UK.