Unveiling five handsets alongside its new BlackBerry 7 Operating System, the smartphone giant introduced the Bold 9900 and 9930, its first effort to incorporate NFC support.

The move is part of a wide ranging revamp designed to help RIM fight back against the relatively new smartphone players Apple and Google, which have taken huge chunks out of a market once dominated by the Canadian firm.

Google has already added NFC to one of its Android handsets and is pushing ahead with a major contactless payments programme. Apple is expected to follow suit, possibly within the next couple of months with the iPhone 5.

Blackberrys have been used for contactless payments before; in February Bank of America piloted a system that saw customers with certain models given new battery covers and microSD cards, while Bank of Montreal simply attached NFC stickers to handsets.