Indeed, the agreed mobile payments universe has undergone an abrupt revolution, according to David Hall, SVP of vendor alliance partnerships at PSCU, the payments services CUSO in St. Petersburg, Fla.

“Apple Pay will give visibility to mobile payments,” he predicted. “That will help CU Wallet; it will benefit all payments providers.”

That point is key. Before Apple Pay's launch, optimism about mobile payments at point of sale was slim. Google Wallet seemingly had stalled. The cellular carrier-owned Softcard (formerly known as Isis) had been widely regarded as a failure. Besides Starbucks, few other companies had a mobile payment tool that received wide acclaim, according to some experts.

Apple Pay changed that when it launched Oct. 20. The mobile tool runs only on iPhone 6 – earlier iPhones lack Near Field Communication chips that are essential to Apple Pay. New iPads can use it for online purchases but not at point of sale. Behind the launch was Apple Pay suddenly thrust mobile payments into the national conversation.

Meanwhile, CU Wallet has not launched yet but company executives said it is slated to go into pilots soon with an expected rollout in the first quarter of 2015.

That timeline does not necessarily mean Apple Pay had a head start, at least not with credit unions. While the tool may have launched for a handful of big card issuers, from JPMorgan Chase to American Express, not a single credit union has gone live yet in the system.

At the $60 billion Navy Federal Credit Union in Vienna, Va., which had been named at the Apple Pay launch as an early adopter, a spokesperson clarified: “Navy Federal will be offering Apple Pay to its members later this fall. We leapt at the opportunity to make Apple Pay available to our members, who, in general, are quick to embrace new technology.”

Hall said PSCU is “optimistic that we will get a few credit unions live in Apple Pay before year end.”

Other card processors that serve credit unions are following a similar pattern. There are no firm Apple Pay launch dates for credit unions that are presently known, with only a handful of them expected to go live before the end of the year.

Experts have said one barrier is the limited market that Apple Pay serves. According to industry data, Android phones outsell iPhones in the U.S. and Apple Pay offers no roadmap for bringing mobile payments to non-iOS phones. That limitation means the mobile tool may be a partial solution.

Accordingly, some credit unions have pinned their mobile payment hopes on CU Wallet.

“The payments function is fundamental to our relationships with our members. Any institution that surrenders this relationship to a third party takes a significant risk,” Keith Sultemeier, president/CEO of the $3.4 billion Kinecta Federal Credit Union in Manhattan Beach, Calif., said.

“This is a path to commoditization and irrelevance,” he added. “Individual credit unions are not terribly significant in the financial services landscape, but the credit union industry has enough scale to attract merchants and influence other payments participants. The greater our collaboration, the bigger our impact.”

Ownership of transaction data is an advantage CU Wallet has in its corner. Apple Pay has said it does not store transaction details, and therefore, the information can't be passed along to participating financial institutions.CU Wallet, by contrast, has said it will make transaction details known to credit unions.

“Apple bypasses us, and our brand,” Annette Zimmerman, president/CEO of the $447 million Houston-based PrimeWay Federal Credit Union, said. “Apple is not providing ownership of the transaction information, as CU Wallet will. It's important for us to own this data.”

Another, big difference between Apple Pay and CU Wallet is the latter will be built into a credit union's mobile banking app, Otey said, adding, “We will not have standalone visibility.”

That is starkly different from Apple Pay where Apple will be the dominant brand and linked credit and debit cards will live under the company's name, much as they currently do in Apple's iTunes payment tool.

Add up the negatives and, several credit unions told CU Times that Apple Pay is off the table for them.

Zimmerman is adamant that Apple Pay is not part of PrimeWay's future. Other CU Wallet backers are more ambivalent. At a large credit union in the West that has strongly supported CU Wallet, a senior executive who requested anonymity due to Apple's agreements, said his institution is in the queue to roll out Apple Pay.

“We are doing this as a member accommodation; it's for members who want it,” the executive said. “We believe CU Wallet is the better choice for our members, merchants, and for us but we do not want to disappoint members who believe Apple Pay is what they need.”

Some credit unions see the landscape otherwise.

At the $197 million Cy-Fair Federal Credit Union in Houston, Brett Wooden, SVP of marketing and innovation, said of the Apple Pay versus CU Wallet dust-up: “It's David versus Goliath, isn't it?”

“If you went to a mall and you asked what's CU Wallet? Who would know? But they would know about Apple Pay,” Wooden noted, adding Cy-Fair is exploring entry into Apple Pay and presently has no interest in CU Wallet.

Gil Mermelstein, managing director and head of financial services consulting firm West Monroe Partners' New York/East Coast office, also raised a doubt: “Can CU Wallet keep up with Apple Pay?”

He said he expected a brisk rate of innovation out of Apple and that Apple Pay is 1.0 but “the growth curve will accelerate.”

Can a startup CUSO match moves with Apple? One potential benefit is CU Wallet's technology is provided by the Auburndale, Mass.-based Paydiant Inc., the same firm that is supporting the mobile payment tools for merchant-backed MCX, which involves Wal-Mart and other retail heavyweights.

Paydiant Co-founder Chris Gardner told CU Times that the firm saw few obstacles to building in tokenization, which is a security upgrade baked into Apple Pay. Paydiant also has in the works several pilots involving the company's tools usage in Near Field Communication settings, the other place where Apple Pay differs fundamentally from CU Wallet.

“It's Apple. They will force everyone to react,” said, Gardner, who felt it does not appear out of reach to keep pace with the company.

As credit unions weigh Apple Pay versus CU Wallet, some experts believe in the still early days of mobile payments at point of sale, it will not be easy for every institution to decide where it wants to cast its lot.

“The worst decision a credit union can make however is to take no action at all,” James Robert Lay, CEO of CU Grow, a digital marketing agency in Pasadena, Texas.