Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

But RIM? It’s desperate. It also already has more NFC-enabled phones out there than anyone else, plus payments experience in places like the Middle East, as well as a huge financial incentive: survival.

That means it’s the only phone maker that could say, “Forget coupons and ads and fighting with carriers and banks over who controls NFC payments—let’s flood the market with NFC-payment-capable phones. Oh wait, we’ve already done that. OK, let’s actually turn on that payment capability and turn the keys over to carriers and banks. We won’t make any money on payments. But if we sell enough phones, we’ll stay in business.”

A year ago, RIM wasn’t smart (or desperate) enough to do that. It was trying to negotiate deals with AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S. and Rogers in Canada. But talks fell apart over whether payment-card information would be stored in the phone’s SIM card, where the carriers and banks would control it, or in a secure chip in the phone itself, where RIM could call the shots.

Now RIM has finally agreed to let Rogers and CIBC have control of NFC payments. If it can close similar deals with U.S. carriers, there will suddenly be lots of BlackBerry phones that can mimic contactless payment cards. (Putting a SIM card into lots of existing phones is trivial compared to selling lots of new NFC-enabled phones.)

Then all RIM has to do is to get its young, social-obsessed BlackBerry users to start an NFC-using fad. Which sounds pretty unlikely—until you realize that RIM managed to organize a mystery flash mob in front of an Apple Store in Sydney, Australia, last month. A black-clad crowd waved signs and chanted “Wake up!” before disappearing without explanation. RIM waited a week before owning up to the publicity stunt.

Dumb? Sure. Incoherent? You bet. The type of thing that sounds like it could inspire a fad of flash mobs waving signs and chanting meaningless slogans outside stores? Actually, yes.

If RIM can create an NFC fad, of course, it will just be a fad. But it might be enough to prime the mobile-payments pump. That could be the best shot at making all that retailer effort to get Google Wallet and ISIS working worth the trouble.

And if that NFC fad just burns out? Then RIM gets buried anyway, and we can all declare NFC to be the Pet Rock of payments and move on.

Either that or go back to waiting for Apple.