It's been a feast of memorable moments, 2016 - and labelled a year of despair by Banking Day on Monday. The NPP.  An all star show ahead in 2017 from the Australian banking industry, one in chronic need of a better story to tell. Real-time payments by the end of next year is the target. The vice on banker pay. It's a zero share bonus for the rank and file at ANZ and reduced pay on the whole for the top brass.  The ANZ Macquarie cartel. An admitted cartel in Australian banking, operating in Singapore and dated to 2011. A sanction tied up with the regulator fad to turn money market rate trading into misconduct.  Still, this must have whetted the ACCC's interest.  Might it be a taster of more cartel allegations ahead, with a parochial twist?Margin management and profit maximisation alive and well at year end. In a year of banks walking back the received wisdom on dividend growth and 15 per cent ROE targets, the sector is on form at the end of 2016 to trade off returns for credit growth. A January follow up on home loan repricing seems so likely it's practically a sure bet. Bamboozled twice on popular votes, UK and US. Protected in the Australian election. The bookies were wrong on Brexit, cynical markets on form on an epic slap by the UK's little Englanders.  The Donald Trump boilover later in the year was, on the whole, misunderstood by the markets.  They are still scratching their heads. In Australia, the pollsters and banks scraped through the election.Dividend cuts. ANZ, as so often in 2016, generated news and sector leadership, acting at the half year. Other banks froze dividends.  Westpac took a realist turn in late 2016, cutting its ROE target.Partisans for the end of total shareholder return as an item of interest, none emerged.The vanguard of the army of industry self-destruction ordered themselves into action over Apple Pay. A collective boycott, too absurd to be taken seriously. It was old world banking industry thinking at its worst, unmistakable evidence of an industry richly vulnerable to the fintech threat. The closed door, 'obstruct them out' ascetic in banking is done for, and every bank associated with this affair will be forever scarred by it. Bendigo and Adelaide Bank mightily embarrassed as the lead applicant on the Apple Pay matter.An industry kamikaze kabuki on digital wallets. The end of Semble. The aggravated start of Android Pay and Apple Pay.The centrepiece of a dreadful year for banking, the sector's inane and hopeless quest for unfettered access to Apple's inventions, will be buried in 2017.  But, regrettably, mobile wallets will be impeded once more. Apple and ANZ and Apple Pay.  Mike Smith curated this and Shayne Elliott basks in the credit.  Elliott told the recent AGM of eight million mobile wallet transactions, providing a taste of