We've seen several upcoming near field communication-enabled BlackBerrys leak recently, but if you'd rather just give your current 'Berry some NFC rather than wait around for the new models, Bank of America may have something for you. The folks at BGR have gotten details on BofA's now Mobile Wallet program, which allows select customers to equip their current BlackBerry with NFC capabilities. Users that get invited into BofA's program will receive a new NFC-capable battery cover for their handset as well as a microSD card to store the necessary software. Once equipped, the device will be able to communicate with Mastercard's PayPass systems once the program goes live this spring. The list of BlackBerrys that are eligible for the program are: 8520, 8530, 9000, 9630, 9650, 9700.
With BlackBerry and Android seemingly embracing NFC, and rumors of the feature making it into the next iPhone, too, it certainly seems like the tech is poised to be one of the next big things in the mobile world. I'll be interested to see how it's received by customers and how quickly businesses begin adopting the systems for mobile payments. It might take some time, but I could see some decent adoption for NFC, especially from those of us that would like to lighten the load in our pockets/purses. Does using NFC, especially for mobile payments, sound appealing to you?
Via BGR
