Our upcoming feature Surface Cache GI will have some support for emissive triangles. I know these are not exactly the same as area lights but if you put an emissive material on a simple quad mesh, then you have something very similar.
(Note that this is still a work in progress).
In the future, Surface Cache GI may also support area lights directly. Surface Cache GI is not yet released but you can try it out and read more over here.