The notion of gamification was not conceptualized until 2010, when the idea developed that games – more formally, game design thinking — could be applied to non-game applications to make them, well, more fun and engaging. We’re talking about becoming a “mayor” on Foursquare and the like.

But games, and I mean outright games, seem to have taken hold in banking just this week. There are two notable initiatives that have kicked off, and they offer proof positive that bankers are really starting to play around.

The first new game comes from American Express. American Express has started pushing out a mobile game on Trivial Technology, a developer of mobile games of chance like hearts and gin rummy. The Amex game comes from the shopAmex brand and challenges users to know their local shopping. When I played the game, it asked me to identify which of three establishments served ice cream (I got that answer right) and to match Manhattan neighborhoods to three notable restaurants (I botched that one). The game was a nice way of “playing” with the notion of shopping locally.

The second new game comes from — get this — the Department of the Treasury. Yesterday, Treasury introduced the MyMoneyAppUp Challenge. MyMoneyAppUp is a competition to win $250 to $10,000 for banking ideas or actual app designs. True, this is more competition than “game,” but the initiative centers on “winning,” and that is what gamification is all about: creating a dynamic of winning and losing to further a business objective. That the Treasury Department is hosting this competition is shocking to say the least.

Aristotle Onassis, the shipping tycoon, once said, “After a certain point, money is meaningless. It ceases to be the goal. The game is what counts.” Apparently, that is even truer today.