In mobile banking 1.0, the central theme was putting the functionality of online banking into a mobile form factor, according to Wade Arnold, managing director of mobile banking app Banno at Jack Henry's ProfitStars in Monett, Mo.

With the shift into mobile banking 2.0, it's "about thinking for the consumer, rather than forcing the consumer to figure it out for himself," Arnold explained. By that, he meant using the intelligence built into mobile devices such as location awareness and delivering more pertinent and personalized content.

For now, the good news for credit unions is they are ahead of regional and community banks in terms of mobile, according to Malauzai's figures on mobile banking apps in the Apple Apps store. The company found that 65% of credit unions between $50 million and $15 billion in assets had an app, compared to 51% of banks in that same asset range.

The smaller the institution, the less probable it was to have an app. Forty percent of credit unions between $50 million and $100 million in assets had an app, Malauzai discovered. Of credit unions with assets in the $1 billion to $5 billion range 94.8% had an app.

Malauzai also ranked the app developers by number of institutions served, Robb Gaynor, the company's co-founder, said. He tabbed the Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv in first place, FIS in Jacksonville, Fla., in second place, Jack Henry in third place and ranked Malauzai fourth.

The shift to mobile banking 2.0 is happening, Gaynor noted. The first wave of apps rolled out three to five years ago and now, financial institutions want differentiation in their marketplace versus a cookie cutter app, he added.

Gaynor said seven in every 10 contracts Malauzai signs are competitive takeaways where the company replaced an incumbent. The institution made that choice usually because it wanted more and better and did not believe its current provider could deliver those goods, he explained.

Fiserv has more than 2,000 mobile banking customers, according to Steve Shaw, vice president.

"There are a lot of shiny objects out there," he observed.

Read more: Separating value from trendy clutter …

While institutions are being tempted to build into mobile banking an ever expanding list of features, not every shiny object is right for every institution. Some may simply be trendy clutter.

Shaw said he sees card management tools built into mobile banking apps that let consumers turn their own cards on and off are gaining in importance. He also said that Fiserv is cautiously optimistic about mobile photo bill pay, which is the technology that allows a consumer to snap a picture of a bill to set up a payment.

Alberto Jimenez, IBM director of mobile payments, said for financial institutions, the apps bar keeps getting pushed higher in part because of what he called a market trend of mobile- only institutions. He pointed to Moven and Simple as examples of banks built around apps that have appealed to younger demographics.

Jose Resendiz, vice president of product management at online financial management services firm Digital Insight in Redwood City, Calif., said he expected to see much more intelligence in next generation apps.

For instance, there may be geo-location tools that lets credit unions know when members has entered a car dealership. The member would have be asked to opt in but Resendiz said he has seen survey data that showed more than half of consumers were comfortable with letting their locations be used if the payoff was better targeted offers. At the dealership, the member could be presented with a valid car loan offer, he pointed out.

"We are seeing a lot of brainstorming around how to use all the intelligence the phone has," Resendiz said.

There is a significant push to build biometric authentication into mobile banking and a number of institutions will push it out in 2015, Gaynor predicted. Fingerprints, similar to Apple's TouchID model, are positioned to grab an early lead.

Gaynor also said that many institutions want to build new account openings into mobile apps. That feature is usually limited to online banking but as the number of mobile-only members ticks up, it's inevitable that account onboarding will be put into mobile banking apps, he added.

That leaves the big question of what will become of credit unions that do not embrace mobile banking. With hundreds of them in that camp, a lack of an app is not an immediate death sentence, according to some experts. However, it may get harder to grow the institution especially because many younger, prospective members are drawn to mobile banking.

Long term, matters could be bleak for stragglers.

"I would say that financial institutions that do not have mobile banking will not exist in the future," Elizabeth Cooper, a professor of finance who teaches banking classes at La Salle University in Philadelphia, said. "Everyone will be using some form of mobile banking and payment in the future and banks without that capability will not be able to compete."