We still need to carry around our credit cards in our wallets, so why not turn your handset into an e-wallet? Might as well. That’s what Visa Europe has in mind with the first commercial deployment of its iPhone payments App.

NFC-capable iPhones should be on their way later this year and the AAPL intends to look into ways for merchants to obtain a cheap and easy set-up for payment kiosks so that mobile payments can be easily handled with the proper infrastructure in place. This iPhone payment system requires users to use an add-on device before making a payment, but the iPhone 5 may have a built-in e-wallet if the rumors turn out to be true.

Visa is paving the way for iPhone owners to be able to make payments with their handset at special terminals. This wireless credit card payment system is the first of its kind in the world. It will involve a customized payment software called Visa payWave, which will come pre-installed on a memory card.

The iPhone itself lacks an external memory slot, so it will require you to buy a new iPhone case that is Apple-certified. This makes everyone richer, including the case manufacturer. Everyone except for you. Your money will be leaving with the case and with every transaction.

It’s good to know what’s going on in your credit card account. It’s even better to know what’s happening in real-time. That’s why Visa is testing a real-time notification system for mobile phones. Users are able to choose the alert level (whether for all or only the expensive items) and even choose if they prefer SMS or Email alerts.

Currently VISA employees are testing the system to work out all the kinks. things out. Since we are dealing with VISA, we are guessing that the service won’t be free once it goes public, but that remains to be seen.

This new 3M Mobile ID Reader could soon be used at events or in situations that require tight security. The idea is that it would scan your identification quickly to prove that you are who you say you are. Then you can be on your way in no time. It works like a credit card scanner and it would be used to scan things like your Visa card or passport, cross checking that info with watch lists of those who are threats.

It runs on Windows Mobile 6 and features WiFi, GSM/GPRS EDGE and a fingerprint sensor. It also has 8GB of storage for keeping track of those that have been scanned. That way they can leave all of that data sitting around somewhere and screw us all. Let’s hope not.