Just five years ago, mobile banking seemed futuristic, the stuffof sci-fi; but today, it has emerged as a must have, and alsopotentially, as a way for small credit unions to compete with bigbanks.

A regional credit union can't have hundreds of branches, but forsmartphone carrying members, there is a branch in every pocket. That is the game-changing magic of the technology.

Mobile banking continues to evolve. Here, experts pinpoint fiveways mobile banking in 2014 is likely to be very different fromwhat you had known.

Read more: The Biggest Channel

Doug Brown, a senior vice president at FIS, made a boldprediction that soon mobile will eclipse online in terms ofusers.

“Mobile users will exceed those of online users as mobile takescenter stage as the primary interaction channel for banks andcredit unions – making mobile the new battlefront for relevance tocustomers and driving a market share shift of customers based onmobile,” he said.

Brown flatly predicted: “In the next 12 months, mobile willovertake online in terms of number of users. It already has moretransactions.”

He added that this is upping the ante for credit unions in termsof the quality, and functionality, of their mobile bankingapps.

“Consumers will have very little patience with apps that don'tperform,” he said.

Other experts may see mobile domination not coming until 2015,but even that's happening much sooner than had been thought a fewyears ago. Well-priced smartphones will become the norm andcarriers will put high-speed 4G in more neighborhoods. Theinfrastructure is there to multiply mobile banking usage.

A growing trend

More members are asking for mobile-only account access, becausethey do not intend also to use online banking. That creates acomplication, as many mobile banking packages are parasitic ononline: for instance, new payees may have to be added via online.But, said experts, tweaking mobile tools to decouple them fromonline will not be a challenge for most institutions, and that maybe tested in 2014.

Read more: The camera has it …

The smartphone camera has been a key to mobile banking's rapidadoption, said Robb Gaynor, chief technology officer at Malauzai.The Austin, Texas-based developer of mobile apps which has rolledout Mobile Remote Deposit Capture – perhaps the quintessentialmobile banking activity – as well as Picture Pay, where consumerscan pay a bill by snapping a picture of it.

Online banking users could scan a check and deposit it – andsome did – but it never caught on outside of business users.Suddenly, MRDC is emerging as the defining popular mobile bankingactivity, Gaynor said, and a key has been the progressively better andsharper cameras on smartphones.

The first iPhone, in 2007, shipped with a two megapixelcamera. The current iPhone 5S ships with an eight megapixelcamera. That means sharper, clearer images and more successfuldeposits, just because the built-in camera improved.

Now that camera is getting enlisted to help consumers pay theirbills with a mobile phone and, Gaynor said, financial institutionsthat are early adopters of Picture Pay are seeing usage thateclipses initial projections. Consumers apparently like theconvenience of snap a picture-pay-done.

Experts envision yet more use of cameras in banking because thismay be the fastest and surest way to input data on a small formfactor device. Typing on glass on a tiny keyboard is not easy andnever is fast. Snapping a photo of a driver's license, forinstance, or a pay stub, is as easy as a click. If the experts areright, consumers be doing more of that in 2014 as more apps buildin roles for the camera in processes such as account onboarding,Gaynor predicted.

Read more: What's in your digitalwallet?

This may be the year when your credit union needs to decide itsdigital wallet strategy.

That is the prediction from Paul Fiore, founder of CU Wallet, who said: “2014 will be the year of the digitalwallet for financial institutions. For consumers, it will be2015.”

Assembling a viable digital wallet payments tool has proven muchmore complicated than many once thought. Consumers, financialinstitutions, merchants, smartphone makers and still others have tobe brought on board; and, so far, they have not been rushing toembrace this new payments tool where the phone replaces the plasticcard.

But experts insist that adoption of digital wallets is simply amatter of time.

“We will see much more aggressive piloting of digital wallets in2014,” said FIS' Brown.

Integral to wallet adoption will be inclusion of rewards anddiscounts, Fiore said. The phone becomes the delivery tooland, in that way, a digital wallet will be substantially smarterand more personalized than a plastic card in a leather wallet. Asthat happens, consumers will naturally begin using mobile walletsand that is why credit unions need to begin to take steps to beready, said Fiore, who added that 33 credit unions had alreadysigned up for CU Wallet.

Read more: Biometrics matter

Will 2014 finally be the year when biometrics as a tool forpositively identifying a member catches on? More experts aresaying that is exactly what will happen, and they point to Apple'sTouch ID fingerprint reader as a tipping point. Because it isApple, people think it is cool, not an annoyance, said Jay McLaughlin, chief security officer at Q2, an Austin,Texas-based financial technology firm.

“Biometrics will be the future for financialinstitutions. Something I am will become part of the log-in.That will be another factor along with something I have andsomething I know,” McLaughlin said.

Various biometric modalities are competing for the poleposition: there are fingerprints, eye scans, also voice prints.

Lately, and despite Apple's deployment of fingerprints, some arelooking to voice, mainly because it's a natural complement ofsmartphones.

“Voice is a natural part of using the phone,” said JohnPetersen, a founder of ValidSoft, a voice biometrics company. He added that ValidSoft tools are in tests with several financialinstitutions right now.

Makers of other biometrics, of course, plump for their tools,but know this: the more doubts that are raised about the securityof the username-password log-in, the more the quest foralternatives will intensify. And right now, biometrics seems primedfor broader adoption in the coming year.

Read more: Non-banks rising

Amid the good news driven by mobile banking, there is a worry onthe horizon: The rise of the digital only and non-bank.

From GoBank to Bluebird, newbanking competitors are emerging and, said FIS' Brown, their futurelooks rosy.

“Digital only banks will grow faster than traditional financialinstitutions,” he said. “They clearly have a value proposition thatresonates with a profitable customer base, with multiple customerrelationships.”

No experts were outright predicting the disappearance of thetraditional branch-based institution, but futurists,increasingly, envision a world where a growing number of digitally-savvy consumers getthe financial services they need from institutions with a small, orno, physical presence.

And that means the stage is set for yet more reinvention and yetmore innovation, because the mobile banking revolution is only inits first phases. There is much more ahead and it will likely comefaster than anyone has thought.