SAN DIEGO — Financial services players and merchants came together this week to sort through the digital wallet chaos and explore payment possibilities at the first annual Emerging Payments conference. Within the sessions Bank Innovation attended were rich ideas and recurring themes on how the payments revolution will play out among the disparate players and platforms. Here are seven main themes that stood out:

1. In payments, plastic works just fine. That’s why digital wallets will have to “revolutionize” shopping through innovations in loyalty and couponing in order to get consumers to switch their payment patterns.

2. Merchants are the major thorn to NFC taking off to date, and we’re still in early NFC days. At the end of the day, merchants will accept NFC so they won’t lose sales.

3. Because of digital wallet revenue possibilities, true engagement with partnerships between unlikely players in the payments ecosystem is finally taking place and will continue to take place. In other words, banks can’t tap into the m-commerce scene alone and will need to forge ahead with non-traditional partnerships. One banker said it best: “There’s no bank big enough to have a non-interoperable system.”

4. For wallets to be truly digital, they must store all cards, including identity cards, as well as access money from ATMs, too.

5. The days of “if you build it, they will come” are over for banks. Rather than pushing products, banks must listen to what their customers are saying and execute on their wants.

6. Banks shouldn’t get enamored with any particular emerging payments technology. Rather, they should design innovations for everyone’s grandma, meaning simplicity is key. Furthermore, banks need to develop solutions that extend well beyond traditional banking.

7. Shopping has become the next frontier in consumers’ use their mobile devices.