BALTIMORE — Call it a painful paradox in the numbers-drivenresearch presented by James VanDyke,president of JavelinStrategy& Research at the NACHA 2012 conference here.

The good news for credit unions: they have a dramatic lead incustomer satisfaction, with more than 90% of members saying theylike their credit union, per Van Dyke's numbers.

The bad news: the big banks have taken a massive lead in rollingout cutting edge technologies such as mobile banking, remotedeposit capture and person-to-person payments and the reality, saidVan Dyke, is that “smaller institutions are struggling with thesetechnologies and this will negatively impact them.”

“If these technologies are going to be essential” – and Van Dykeleft little doubt in his Monday presentation that he believed theywould be, given the enthusiasm for younger demographics in toolssuch as mobile banking – “there is going to be a lot of smallinstitution instability in the future.”

Van Dyke's numbers painted a picture of a much more tech hungrycustomer base at large financial institutions – more than 10% oftheir customers are signed up for mobile alerts, for instance,whereas the signups among credit union members are much lower, perthe Javelin research.

Credit unions, in Javelin's numbers, do one thing very right:they pace the field in member usage of debit and check cards,showing higher usage than even the biggest banks.

But, suggested Van Dyke, small institutions and their technologyvendors – where, he admitted, most credit unions and communitybanks turn for high-tech products rather than brewing theminternally – are simply going to have to step up their games.

That is about the only way forward in staying competitive withyounger consumers, he stressed.