Comment: Follow along Cassidies chase Apple Pay

Where is Apple Pay? How far off might it be in Australia?

And will any bank foster this promising payments innovation in our land?

One source of delay is squabbles over money and the siphoning of a revenue share to Apple from interchange. The American tech giant wanted close to a third of recurring inter-bank fees on transaction volume. Wrangles over a credible model continue to prolong negotiations.

Cynicism in banking is also a brake, since Apple's share of smartphone handsets is merely significant rather than dominant.

The Australian banking industry has also developed complementary, handset-based payments, including some good ones.

But, like wallet solutions worldwide, nothing has really caught the imagination of bank users.

While there is a plausible case Apple Pay will be a rip roaring success it could so easily prove to be the Mondex of its day.

That early 1990s gee whiz payments idea is one topic on which NAB brings unique insight, only one reason Apple and the bank make a decent fit.

The defensive obstacles laid by the banks and at work in banks are proving challenging to the Apple assault.

Enthusiastic investments in complementary services have already chewed at capital works budgets.

Industry-wide cooperation to make Apple Pay happen is a step into a danger zone for too many banks - a feature of a cartel culture.

The slack record of promoting the limited handset-based payment options at a point of sale terminal seems not to engender any energy for a challenging option.

A chronic inability to effectively promote change in the banking industry must be the main restraint.

Breakout payments innovation and concerted industry effort was, at one time, a hallmark of Australian banking.

Eftpos was great from early on. The renovation around chip cards and contactless is one instance of the banking industry cooperating to build social progress.

But what got tried, abandoned, funded, then de-funded.

Endless flirtations with madcap payments plans including some shared investment. Bright ideas with prospects flame through the industry like trapped meteors.

The industry was a late mover in internet banking and the overlay is for the most part little improved. The NPP is supposed to fix this.

BPay has the job of prepping the consumer and business payments service on the National Payments Platform.

Its Mambo failure proved no deterrent to banks coordinating through BPay yet more shared investment.

Great hopes are being placed on a superior service.

But the 20-year product cycle in payments is an infuriating marker of a sector self-made to disappoint.

One can only hope that NAB or some other bank is close to making Apple Pay happen.

Many will follow, but if its anything like Cabcharge or China Union Pay, drawing the banking industry fully into Apple Pay may be drawn out over years.

Might the industry for once find its wits.