MShift's Chief Executive Officer Awele Ndili says three major factors have come together to give mobile banking serious traction.

"First of all, the devices themselves are completely different, with color and larger screens and SMS messaging along with voice functionality," he says. "Second, the data rates are phenomenal now. Initially they were running at 960k, while now, rates of one to 10 gigs a second are not unheard of.

"And then, finally you have the end user, comfortable with voice and data services of all kinds. So, with all these pieces coming together, it's natural that anytime, anywhere mobile banking's time has arrived.

"People are now comfortable using mobile devices for multiple functionality and they expect to be able to access their banking and pay their bills that way, as well."

Amplify FCU, the former Texas IBM Employees Federal Credit Union now two years a community charter, expects to meet that expectation. A soft launch of about a year already has netted 3% penetration of its membership using the mobile service, a number expected to increase now that an active marketing campaign has gotten under way in tech-savvy Austin.

"We think we're at the tipping point with this, both with the devices and the carriers," says Linda Edwards, director of public relations at Amplify (www.goamplify.com). "We work really hard to offer a complete experience to our members that translates well with every delivery channel, and the hardware and software have become friendly enough that mobile is now part of this."

Competitive factors also come into play. For instance, banking giant Wachovia and AT&T recently announced a deal in which the carrier's cell phones will come with Wachovia online banking software already installed.

"It was really pivotal for us that we were able to do this in a way that stays device and carrier independent," Edwards says.

The MShift software is neither device nor carrier dependent, running as a Web-based service atop the online banking and core processing functions already in place; in Amplify's case, both are ULTRADATA platforms.

"We had no integration issues and it took very few resources on our end to get this going," Pollack says of her credit union's launch of mobile banking. "We also made it very similar to our online banking, so members don't have to re-learn anything.

"We actually have gotten almost no calls to our call center about this, and that was one of our goals: To make it easy so we weren't asking members to jump through hoops just to have the service."

Vendors like MShift already have done the jumping, Ndili says. "We do all the integration with the Internet banking providers, and have partnered for years with companies like Metavante and Digital Insight," he says. "We also keep up with the manufacturers and carriers and support a library of more than 7,000 devices right now."

MShift's client list includes about 30 credit unions, including such big names as Mountain America, The Golden 1, Digital, Xerox, Safe and VyStar. That list has doubled in the past 18 months as the ease of use and feature list has grown, Ndili says, and now includes such things as bill presentment and check viewing.

"We've had to overcome the hype cycle, but I believe we're there now," the MShift CEO says. "It was very much like the early days of Internet banking itself. The hype was there but not the technology. Now it is."

Consumers are responding. The research and advisory firm Celent, for example, just released a report that predicts 30% of all online banking households will engage in mobile banking.

Amplify FCU expects the same kind of surge.

"It might only be in a year or two, but at some point in time, this is going to be like online banking," says Pollack, Amplify's vice president.

"I can't imagine joining a credit union without online banking. Soon, it'll be the same thing with mobile."

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