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Has your bank card gotten acquainted with your cellphone or other mobile device? If not yet, it’s likely the two will get together, and bankers hope it will be a serious, long-term relationship.

Though still in its infancy, mobile banking will quickly move toward widespread acceptance and use by customers and reach a point where demand will begin driving its growth, say experts.

Bank customers are beginning to get a taste of the possibilities, “and they want more of it,” said Jack Vonder Heide, a technology consultant scheduled to address the Iowa Bankers Association during its annual convention this week in Des Moines. “We’re probably 12 to 18 months away from the point where customers are starting to regularly ask for this service. Customer demand will get banks to really accelerate their efforts.”

Of online banking users, 13 percent are expected to use mobile banking by 2009 compared with 4 percent in 2007, according to a survey of 23 large financial institutions conducted earlier this year by Aite Group LC, a Boston-based financial services consultant. An estimated 220 million Americans subscribe to wireless services.

Already available through some of the major banking companies, such as Wells Fargo & Co. and U.S. Bancorp, mobile banking products enable customers to use their cellphones or other mobile devices to receive text-message confirmations of transactions, transfer cash between accounts and perform other transactions. The largest banks are now broadening the features to include online bill payment using mobile devices, and systems that will enable a customer to pay for an item by simply passing his or her cellphone over a point-of-sale device.

“You’re not going to find many young people in a teller line to cash a check,” said Vonder Heide, president of Technology Briefing Centers Inc. in Oak Brook, Ill. Vonder Heide, who advises bank clients in 48 states on technology issues, said banks of all sizes must address mobile banking or risk losing customers to those offering the best products.

In July, U.S. Bank announced its launch of mobile banking services to all of its online banking customers, allowing them to use their phone or mobile device such as a BlackBerry or iPhone to check account balances, transfer money, obtain transaction history or find branches or automated teller machine locations.

“I think the tools are significant, both for convenience reasons and for staying on top of account activity to deter fraud,” said Mike Helak, president of the U.S. Bank’s Central Iowa region. Helak didn’t have an estimate for the number of Central Iowa customers using the service, which the bank plans to enhance with bill payment and message alert capabilities.

Earlier this year, U.S. Bank completed a pilot program with MasterCard Inc. and Nokia Corp. to test a mobile payment system enabling customers to pay for items at the point of sale.

Vonder Heide said the cost of the technology is decreasing and that smaller community banks are generally in a good position financailly to offer the products.

“It’s the new way of thinking that community banks will have to cater to if they want to accommodate the next generation,” he said.

Jerry Warrick, operations technology director for Bank Iowa Corp. in West Des Moines, said his company likely will wait for the technology to mature before adopting it.

“I think everyone’s going to be on it sooner or later, just because of the newer generation,” he said. “I hear that it’s bringing in a lot of kids. They don’t have big accounts now, but banking is all about relationships, if you can build that relationship at a younger age.”

Bank Iowa’s online banking customers can already use mobile devices to bank. “My personal opinion is that as long as you’ve got a mobile-driven Web page, that’s almost as good as mobile banking,” he said. “Some of our Web pages look pretty good on the phones.”

Though Bank Iowa’s core banking system provider already offers a system called GoDough that allows customers to receive text alerts and other non-Web mobile banking features on their phones, Bank Iowa is waiting to see what other products emerge, Warrick said. “I don’t want to jump into the first thing that we see,” he said.

The strategy most banks are using to introduce mobile banking is to provide the service at no added cost to customers for now, with the idea of charging for enhancements later.

“If you basically just add online banking to a mobile phone, you really can’t charge for it,” Warrick said. “Someone’s going to have to find some feature to really wow customers so they can justify charging for it.”