The planned launch of a new mobile payments app by three of the major banks raises more questions than answers about the motivations of the "joint venture participants".Marketing guff published by CBA, Westpac and National Australia Bank have painted the new platform - that will trade under the name of Beem - as an open architecture that "will be independently run, with a mandate to actively seek new participants".Beem will initially develop a mobile payments app that will "enable instant payments for all Australians, including small businesses, regardless of who they bank with".The focus, we are told, will be on facilitating person-to-person payments in real time - a capability that most bank customers will acquire on their transaction accounts anyway when the Reserve Bank-led New Payments Platform is launched early next year.There is a problem with Beem and its claim to becoming an industry standard for payments on a par with the status of the eftpos network and BPay.The main issue is one of provenance.Beem's organisational structure in its current guise can hardly be described as independent.Beem is the trading name of a company known as Let's Pay Pty Ltd that was registered in late September by CBA.All of its directors are CBA heavy hitters, including Peter Steel, the bank's executive head of digital, and Clive van Horen, the head of retail products.The company secretary is Robyn Taylor, whose core employment mandate is to work as a company secretary for CBA subsidiaries.According to ASIC filings, the sole shareholder of Let's Pay Pty Ltd is CBA and the subsidiary's registered office and principal place of business in Sussex Street, Sydney is the same as its parent.Westpac and NAB own no shares in the business and have nominated no-one to the board.These important details underline how Beem is really a creature of the CBA. The country's largest bank appears to be trying to foist its own payments solution on the banking sector, rather than negotiate through industry enterprises and forums that are jointly owned by large and small payments providers.It looks like CBA wants to steamroll alternative mobile payments solutions that the industry has collectively poured loads of capital and expertise into developing.CBA is behaving like a market bully and has enlisted NAB and Westpac as deputies to exert pressure on other payments participants to fall into line. It's pretty clear, though, that banks such as ANZ and Suncorp are refusing to acquiesce.In light of recent investigations into the market behaviour of the three Beem partners, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will no doubt want to keep a watch on how CBA tries to embed its grand design for digital payments.Many banking experts are scratching their heads trying to understand CBA's motive for hyping a payments app that is yet to demonstrate it will deliver a service beyond what the NPP will be offering next year.CBA could be seeking a first mover advantage akin to the early move that helped to entrench CommSec as the market leader in online broking.However, a