A spirited third submission by Apple to the ACCC over a proposed collective boycott by four banks of the company's mobile wallet, Apple Pay, makes clear the probable futility of the oligopoly's approach.There simply won't be any negotiations, or possibly even any discourteous preliminary conversations, between banks and Apple."Apple will never enter into negotiations with the banks," Apple declared."This has always been Apple's position both publicly and with any bank in the world that has suggested that," the US Silicon Valley giant insisted.Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, Westpac and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank are seeking authorisation via the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to engage in limited collective negotiations.The four banks, in a revised ambit, last month proposed an 18-month boycott to persuade Apple to fold over its limits on access to the NFC antenna on the iPhone. This halved the term of the boycott set out last year.At issue, from the banks' point of view, is access to the NFC radio controller on the iPhone and control, by the banks, of the user experience."The applicants are incentivised and committed to starting and ending negotiations quickly," they said in their second submission, in February, to the ACCC.In their original submission, in mid 2016, the banks asserted that Apple had "never faced such a negotiation," in the face of a boycott. As the counterparty in this idealised banking world, Apple seems determined it never will talk.Apple spelled out that "since November 2016 it has not changed its position".It said that "there has not been, because there cannot be, any evidence presented that Apple is going to redesign its products to allow for a less secure and worse customer experience in order to appease a collection of banks in one country."The approach of the four banks - a cohort that excludes ANZ, an Apple Pay collaborator - "has already interrupted the commercial operation of the market and delayed the potential disruption to those banks control" of the payments market, Apple told the ACCC.Apple also ventured another tack in stirring up the competition regulator to maximise any disdain for the banks' strategy."The continual modification" by banks of their claim over the last nine months, Apple said, "calls into question the validity of the application."It told the ACCC that "interested parties have not been afforded a full and proper opportunity to respond."One sub-head in Apple's submission dismisses the "ambulatory nature" of the bank's competition law proposal.Moreover, the application by the banks was a muddle to begin with, Apple implied.More formally, Apple said the banks' claim "does not relate to matters that are relevant to, nor addressed in any way by, the Apple Pay Issuer Agreement."The banks and Apple should know by mid to late March which one of them has prevailed in a memorable tangle in competition law.The ACCC's upcoming final determination on the banks' attempted collective boycott will be central to the effectiveness and even longevity of Australia's highly concentrated banking sector.Apple won over the ACCC against the banks' plans in late November