Who will win the digital wallet race? That is the centralquestion in Aite Group's new report on the emerging battle for the digital wallet, and the bad newsfor the established financial services players – think MasterCardand Visa – is that their existing lines of business “shackle” themto old-school technologies.

That is why Aite researcher RickOglesbyargued that the smart bet is on the “more disruptive” – that is,innovative – approaches coming out of new-style players such asPayPal.

In a statement, Oglesby said, “The major card brands appear tobe painted into a corner, deploying mobile payments strategiesdesigned to protect their existing business. At the same time, theyare surrounded by alternative-payments providers that have theflexibility to pursue a wide variety of solutions and allow demandto drive the results. The playing field is set for a major battle,and traditional payments powers appear to be at adisadvantage.”

Oglesby elaborated in an interview: “The players who canexperiment are in a much better position to win.”

What will prevail – the solutions that will win with consumersand merchants – are simply not yet known. Getting there, suggestedOglesby, will require a lot of trial and error. And the players whocan afford to be “disruptive” seem to him to be the ones mostlikely to succeed.

Either way, however, Oglesby boldly predicted that after manyyears of talk about digital wallets, action is about to happen:“2012 will be the year of the digital wallet – it definitely is coming,” he said.