An upheaval in Australian payments is building for its resolution as Apple and four establishment banks tangle over the banks' attempted collective boycott of Apple Pay.The banks and Apple should know by mid 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 one 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 2016, when the competition regulator was persuaded that fostering rivalry among handset makers and operating system inventors (Apple, Google and Samsung) was far more relevant to stimulating competition and public benefit in Australian payments than bank nit-picking over the mechanics of working with Apple (a protective supplier) to make the company's kit work harmoniously with the banks' own services.The industry chat is that the banks are cocky and well prepared for this next round. As explained in the previous article today about the dire straits the wallet sector appears to find itself in, banks are also more fully engaged in putting their side of the story into the public domain. Apple, we reported, are trapped behind the door of "confidentiality" and have done little to upset suspicion that Apple Pay in Australia is built on anything more than the soggiest of foundations.Apple, if confident, have suppressed that view along with almost all evidence on demand and use for their payments product. But the US IT giant slayed Australia's banking giants in a first bout on this matter.At the end of November, the ACCC, in a draft ruling, resolved to deny the four banks authorisation to collectively bargain with, and potentially boycott, Apple on the terms and conditions for accessing Apple Pay.   The banking group is seeking authorisation to bargain with Apple on two key issues: Â·       access to the near-field communication controller in iPhones, which would enable the banks to offer their own integrated digital wallets to iPhone customers in competition with Apple's digital wallet, but to do so without using Apple Pay (and associated fees); and·       removal of the restrictions Apple imposes on banks preventing them from passing on fees that Apple charges the banks for the use of its digital wallet.The quartet of banks, along with their on-message representative, Initiatives Group joint managing director, Lance Blockley, frame optimism on overturning this, based on the ACCC's polite statement in November that the decision was "finely balanced."It never was finely balanced, with the central analysis of the ACCC explained last year in this commentary: California handset rivalries eclipse obstinate Aussie banks.Google versus Apple. Android Pay versus Apple Pay. Those market pairings and the rivalry among these enabling technologies were the central themes of the ACCC's draft assessment, one critical of the Australian banking sector's pantomime over a boycott.All parties are engaged now in the final steps in the ritual. Submissions are turning up to defend or reshape the ACCC's thinking, a cascade of pro-boycott retail chains and