"We can create mobile banking apps for credit unions that truly are better than what the big banks are issuing. That's our promise," said Robb Gaynor co-founder and chief product officer at Malauzai, an Austin, Tex.-based developer of mobile tools for community-based financial institutions.

The occasion was an announcement that Malauzai, a word meaning "little monkey" in Cantonese and a childhood nickname of co-founder Tom Shen, had closed another round of venture capital fundraising. This round added $2.3 million to the company coffers, but, stressed Gaynor, "we are constantly raising money, so we can develop better apps."

And the reason is that "we see the next three to four years as decisive in the rollout of mobile banking," said Gaynor. His best guess is that around 20% of credit unions currently have a mobile banking channel, but that leaves upwards of 5,000 institutions that do not, and almost all of them will want to deploy mobile, he predicted. "By 2016, pretty much every credit union will have a mobile banking offer."