What's in your [mobile] wallet?

At launch, the service focused on basic banking and brokerage. Kietz said the next round will include information on budgeting, receipt capturing and sharing merchant comments with contact lists, as well as NFC through a partnership with ViVOtech and peer-to-peer mobile payments through partner Obopay.

When NFC is added to the equation, the forecast for mobile payments goes up to $75 billion globally by 2013, according to Juniper Research, which believes the market will reach its tipping point between 2011 and 2013. Japan, for one, already is leading the way with NFC-enabled handsets now on the market. Outside of awareness, the biggest hindrance to the technology is still simply the fact that only a handful of handsets currently are capable of making these transactions.

In terms of other barriers that remain for mobile banking and the new services it promises, one that comes up frequently is security, both real and perceived. Many consumers still are not comfortable with giving that much value to the mobile handset. If executed properly, however, mobile has the potential to be the most secure platform of all. It could beat out the physical wallet, at the very least. When that is lost or stolen, the consumer must account for all the cash lost, cancel each individual credit card and go through a mental checklist of items to secure and replace. The mobile handset can be encrypted, and most carriers serve as the sole contact for disabling accounts.

“In the future, what we are looking at it is putting in an automated network to notify the banks as well, so if there's a real significant concern of fraud, the banks can start introducing their own fraud prevention mechanisms and, if necessary, start the process of reissuing plastic cards or companion cards to consumers so they don't have to do that,” White said.

According to White, the logic behind mobile banking is that the power of three brands standing behind a product will be enough to convince customers of its security. For example, a MasterCard product through Citibank over AT&T's network should put a customer at ease because, in the event of a security breach, they have some big names backing them up. As the market for mobile banking evolves from the WAP experience to advanced services, it may just be a matter of convenience overcoming concern.

“It is really interesting all the different things you can do with it, but it is a different way of looking at it,” White said. “Most people have never had to look at their phone as anything containing significant value. As that changes, these [security] questions will continue to come up, but as consumers see and interact, they generally get a pretty good sense right away that this is easy to do.”