We’ve been waiting oh-so-long for mobile, contactless (think touch-and-go/jedi-cell-phone-wave) payments to finally take off in the states, and it seems like 2011 is finally the year. Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) has budding support for it built-in right in now, and the rumor mill seems pretty dang sure that Apple’s next iPhone will incorporate it in one way or another. The latest to board the NFC train: Research In Motion.
According to RIM CEO Jim Balsillie at his Mobile World Congress keynote this morning, “many, if not most” BlackBerry handsets in 2011 will have NFC support. They haven’t clarified yet as to how they intend to handle the actual funds processing and all those important bits — but if we don’t hear about that today, we’ll probably hear more in the coming weeks.