A group of banks seeking the approval of the competition watchdog to negotiate collectively with mobile wallet providers have narrowed the scope of their application. Their application now relates only to Apple and they have taken security standards off the table.Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, Westpac and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank wrote to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in July, seeking authorisation to engage in "limited collective negotiations with providers of third-party mobile wallet services."The negotiations would cover competition, best practice standards and efficiency.Last week the applicants wrote to the ACCC to clarify the scope of their application. This followed a meeting with the ACCC earlier in the week.The letter confirmed that "the target of the collective negotiation and boycott is limited to Apple."On the issue of fees, the applicants said: "The scope… is limited to negotiating for the right of each issuer to decide whether to pass through to end customers some or all of the issuer's costs associated with participating in Apple Pay."In other words, the collective negotiation is limited to negotiating to remove any 'no pass-through' restriction Apple imposes on issuers."One of the main issues in the original application was a concern that Apple's iPhone is set up in such a way that the only application that can have access to the NFC chip in the phone is Apple Pay. The effect of this is that Commonwealth Bank customers, for example, who want to use the bank's own mobile wallet on an iPhone must attach a sticker with a separate NFC antenna.In last week's letter, the applicants said: "We confirm that the applicants seek to collectively negotiate access to the NFC function as well as the ability to provide competing mobile wallets without Apple unreasonably impeding or preventing this, for example through mechanisms such as unreasonably prohibiting access to the App Store, providing access to the App Store on unreasonable terms or unreasonably delaying the approval of the app and its availability in the App Store."The applicants confirmed that participation in collective negotiations would be open to any financial institutions and retailers issuing credit and debit cards.Originally the applicants had wanted to negotiate collectively on a range of security standards, including requiring Apple to comply with tokenisation service standards and agree to protocols for access to transaction data.Their latest position is that security standards will be left to individual negotiation.