Sprint Nextel has come up with a great idea wherein subscribers will be able to link their credit cards and other traditional payment methods to a mobile purchasing system coming next month.

CEO Dan Hesse announced the Sprint Mobile Wallet during a keynote address on Wednesday evening at the carrier’s annual developer conference in Santa Clara, California.

According to the company, customers will have to download the application from the Sprint Zone support site, and beginning next year, it will be preloaded on many new Sprint handsets.

Users will be able to link Visa, MasterCard, American Express, PayPal, Amazon Payments and other accounts to the mobile wallet and then authorize a purchase with those accounts by entering a PIN (personal identification number) and choosing an account to use. The same PIN would cover all the customer’s payment accounts.

According to Sprint, payments will be processed by CardinalCommerce, which many merchants already use for online payments. SkyMall, Gameloft and Namco have already agreed to accept the Sprint Mobile Wallet. The mobile wallet will make it easier for developers to add a payment system to their mobile apps. Sprint subscribers with an Everything Data plan will be able to use the mobile wallet at no additional charge.