Put your money on Google. That is the headline from a survey payments company ACI Worldwide conducted at the NationalRetail Federation annual confab where the question was: who willwin the mobile wallet wars.

Google won a majority of votes – 53%. PayPal notched 25% of thevotes. Isis – the NFC project involving Verizon, AT&T and Sprint –stumbled its way to 4% of the vote.

Almost one in five – 19% – put their wager on an entrant that isnot yet identified.

Factor in a Harris poll from a few months ago that found 66% of us predictthat credit cards will vanish as more of us pay with smartphones.About one in three expect this handoff to occur within the nextfive years.

If you are skeptical about digital wallets know that theskeptics may outnumber believers, at least among financial servicesexecutives. Forward motion towards wider wallet adoption hasseemingly gotten just about nowhere in the past year. Few consumershave ever used one, few mobile devices have a digital walletcapability, and not many more retailers are equipped to accept themanyway.

But ask the experts and their advice is consistent: ignoredigital wallets at your own risk because they are the future.

That clock is ticking.

The bad news for credit unions: financial institutions are onthe edge of getting disintermediated from the nascent wallet playas non-banks (such as PayPal) gain traction.

This remains extremely early days and in that there is hope forfinancial institutions, suggested Brandon Kuehl, who last weekconducted a webinar focused on digital wallets for Des Moines,Iowa-based The Members Group.

Per Kuehl in an interview, the webinar was “very well attended. There is a lot of credit unioninterest in digital wallets. They want to know where to take theirfirst steps.”

As for options, Kuehl pointed to V.me,a digital wallet via Visa that presently is on offer to creditunions via The Members Group, CSCU and PSCU.

He also fingered Dwolla, the Des Moines-based payments innovator, because of itshistory of working with credit unions.

But in lots of ways the most intriguing mobile wallet option forcredit unions is Google Wallet, which may be enigmatic in itsdealings with financial institutions. On the one hand, Googleinvites card issuers – that means you – to fill out a formto initiate the process of enrolling a credit card in GoogleWallet.

Google has said it welcome inquiries from credit unions and italso has insisted – repeatedly – that it has no interest in a sliceof the interchange pie, not even a few crumbs. It sees its cashflow coming in what it does best: selling targeted ads and ingaining ever sharper data about who its users are and what theywant.

Some experts suggest however that Google – never known for itshigh-touch customer service – is in fact ill-equipped to dealdirectly with smaller financial institutions and has been exploringallying with third-party financial services wholesalers to standbetween them and small institutions.

Either way, though, suggested Kuehl, credit unions have at leastthose three low-cost wallets with comparative ease of entry and lowor no costs – V.me, Dwolla and Google Wallet — and his firm adviceis to take the plunge now.

His prediction is that enthusiasm for wallets will hit aninflection point before long and when that happens, theinstitutions that have yet to take any steps may find themselvesleft behind. “You don't want to be last to this party.”

“Get started now,” urged Kuehl who stressed what he issuggesting is launching a pilot – it doesn't have to be extended tothe whole membership – that lets the credit union learn how walletswork, how their members use them, and how to make the experiencericher and more satisfying.

“Learn from your members. Now is the time,” said Kuehl.

Do this now and when digital wallets go prime time – in a yearor three – you will be at the head of the pack.