It's not often when a bold claim is made that something will change all the rules in banking.

Soon, all eyes will be on London for the Summer Olympics—with some also watching Visa’s latest experiment with contactless point-of-sale payments.

Bankers often hear that mobile soon will take over the payments space, and that financial institutions will have to get on board or get left behind.

Not another Facebook column. Not another paean to the Gen Y Frankenstein that’s supposed to solve every bank marketer’s problems, while cooking dinner, changing the tires, and doing everything else.

The latest round of bring-your-own-device surveys come to the same conclusions: Employees tend to have better techno-gadgets than their employers; employees prefer using them to do their jobs; the gadgets present terrible security risks to employers; and companies need to mount robust security measures for their own protection.

Almost exactly a year after Google unveiled Google Wallet, Apple unveiled what it calls Passbook, a feature that will consolidate merchant offers, tickets, and boarding passes. Right now, the two products have very little in common, but that has not stopped bloggers far and wide from speculating that Passbook could become the killer digital wallet of the future.

Cash is no longer king. Sound familiar? We the phrase just two weeks ago in this space. But here it is again, included in the title to Javelin Strategy & Research’s latest report: 2012-2017: Retail Point of Sale Forecast: Cash Is No Longer King.

A number of clear-headed, no-nonsense financial institution analysts have come to realize that it is the 21st century and compliance systems that worked 15 years ago just don’t cut the mustard any more.

The week brings yet another round of insights that point to the inevitability of new forms of mobile payments, this time involving NFC, PayPal, and the question of how financial institutions relate to the whole issue.

Let’s face it: The bad guys are smart. Way back when, most relied on bogus phishing expeditions, sending hundreds of millions of emails baited with links to introduce malware into unsuspecting victims’ computers.