A group of banks has made an application to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to negotiate collectively with mobile wallet providers.The application is intended to strengthen the banks' bargaining position with Apple over its terms for the introduction of Apple Pay.Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, Westpac and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank are seeking authorisation to engage in "limited collective negotiations with providers of third-party mobile wallet services."The application has been made on behalf of the four banks and "potentially other credit and debit card issuers."The application makes it clear that any collective negotiation would not include fees and charges, which would be a matter for banks to deal with separately.Negotiations would be limited to competition, best practice standards and efficiency.The underlying issue is that Apple's iPhone is set up in such a way that the only application that can access 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.The banks are getting together to try and bust what they see as Apple's technical lockout.Consulting group Novantas is working with the banks on the application. A senior adviser at the company, Lance Blockley, said: "This is about providing Australians with real choice and better outcomes. If successful, the application would have tremendous benefits for the entire Australian mobile payments landscape including for public transport fares, ticketing, store loyalty and rewards programs."According to the banks' application, mobile payment apps other than Apple Pay are not available on Apple devices in any of the markets where Apple Pay is available, which is now nine countries. This is the case even where participating banks had already developed their own mobile banking apps.It claims that earlier this month Apple confirmed that it would not open up NFC functionality to third party payment services in Switzerland, where it is launching."Without access to the iPhone's NFC functionality, Twint [a mobile payment app developed by a group of Swiss banks] has been forced to rely on Bluetooth technology, which requires merchants to install new point of sale terminals," it said.The application argues that in the United Kingdom and the United States, where banks accepted Apple Pay on Apple's terms, the result has been a lessening of competition in mobile wallets.The banks also draw attention to fraud problems that arose in connection with the Apple Pay onboarding process, arguing that they should be able to negotiate collectively to ensure that best practice security standards are included in mobile wallet services.