Similar to car mirror warnings, digital wallets should have caution stickers that read: We are closer to taking off in America than we appear.

“That’s how I feel we are with mobile wallets,” Peter Olynick, Carlisle & Gallagher Consulting Group’s Card & Payments Practice Leader, tells Bank Innovation in an interview held earlier today.

The pervasive conference attendee attitude at BAI 18 months ago was one that believed banks could be “fast followers” in their mobile wallet developments. But in recent months, “there’s been a radical shift in people’s thinking and their sense of urgency” Olynick says. “Being a fast follower is no longer an option.”

Olynick, for one, credits the paradigm change to a number of recent announcements coming from key digital wallet players, coupled with the way more industry players are starting to believe that other technologies, beyond NFC, may play roles in digital wallets’ usage rates.

“I would suggest that alternative technologies might be part of the solution,” Olynick tells Bank Innovation.

This week, the consultancy leaked some of its latest report that polled 605 U.S. consumers in April about mobile wallets and some of the data is, well, disturbing for banks. Indeed, data from the consulting firm shows that consumers are ready to strike up relationships with alternative providers like PayPal, Apple and Google as their digital wallet resources. Though this, in and of itself, is not totally threatening to banks, the following data nugget should strike a danger chord for FIs: Of the 48% of consumers interested in digital wallets, eight in 10 said they would consider using PayPal for their banking services, should the alternative provider offer them the functionality. Ouch. That’s a cut to banking’s core and threatening data to FIs nationwide, especially as these same survey respondents (81%) said they had a high degree of satisfaction with their primary banks.

“The banks should not feel safe that customers won’t move to some of these other providers,” Olynick says.

The firm classified those who favored digital wallets into two groups: techno shoppers (27%), who crave innovations within shopping so they can make the best possible payment decisions, and payment optimizers (21%), consumers who want to make the best payment decisions based on their financial situations.

Beyond the threat to banks from alternative providers, a few other nuggets stood out from the report:

• More than 40% of consumers are frustrated with tracking all the offers flooding their mailboxes and inboxes;

• More than 70% of respondents said they only carry one or two cards. Nearly half of respondents said they are motivated to change the way they use their cards because of offers or their current financial situation;

• CG urges banks to update their core transaction capabilities;

• As banks build out wallets, they must integrate shopping capabilities, as that’s what consumers want from the technology;

• As every card can go into open wallets, banks might lose some branding. In turn, FIs must differentiate their products so customers choose them;

• Banks must think about data and analytics as they relate to behavioral segmentation.