Apple has negotiated a deal with the biggest US banks to give it between 0.15 to 0.25 of a percentage point of the so-called "interchange fees" in return for being allowed onto Apple Pay, a feature on the new iPhone 6 released in Australia on Friday.

Interchange fees are what banks that issue credit cards are paid by Visa and MasterCard, and the merchants' banks for the cost of issuing cards, but they also earn a margin on this. The fees are a percentage of the transaction.

Apple, with a market cap of $US608 billion ($680 billion), is the first of the big tech companies to use its clout to take a share of this revenue.

"We are having detailed discussions with Visa," said Adrian Lovney, general manager of products and services at Cuscal, the credit union payments network.

He expects Apple Pay to be available in Australia towards the end of next year.

Several banks contacted by Fairfax Media said they were speaking with both Visa and MasterCard. They and Mr Lovney said they had yet to be approached by Apple, but they expected them to try to do a similar deal.

An Apple spokesman would not comment on what the company's plans were for Australia; neither would Visa comment on the report.

Banks in Australia, however, have more power than those in the US, being both the issuers of cards and the "acquirer" or the bank to businesses that accept card payments.

In addition, the Reserve Bank of Australia caps interchange fees at a weighted average of 0.5 per cent per transaction over a three-year period. This means there is less margin to share with Apple.

But Mr Lovney said he expected to have very little bargaining power to deal with Apple, even though Android now has a much bigger share of the mobile phone market.

"Banks here have a strong negotiating position because it is quite concentrated," he said.

"But consumers love contactless, they see the phone as being the next level of that. Apple is just going to say 'take it or leave it'."

Apple has been late to offer phones with contactless payments capability. Samsung has had such phones on the market for at least a year, as well as fingerprint authentication.

Google has had a digital wallet, aimed at mobile phones, on the market since 2006, and PayPal invented an online digital wallet in 1998.

But despite the lack of interest in digital wallets on mobiles, many bankers expect the fanatical fans of Apple to make a big difference.

A Westpac spokesman said the fact that Australia had the biggest adoption of contactless cards was another reason the deal Apple had done in the US – where most cards still rely on magnetic stripes and cheques – would probably not work here.

"Australia leads the US and other countries in mobile contactless payments technology and we hope this announcement allows Apple users to join this trend," he said.

"This type of mobile payment experience exists in Australia through multiple banks, and Westpac customers are today making tap-and-pay payments through the Westpac mobile banking application on Samsung's flagship smartphones."

"We look forward to working with Apple to open up the solution to our mobile banking application in the same way they have opened up the Touch ID fingerprint security in IOS8. We separately note that fingerprint login is soon to be launched through our mobile banking applications."

However, one banker said despite Australian banks' stronger bargaining position, he expected Apple to have the power to extract some form of discount on interchange fees.

"It'll be a 'negotiation' – in inverted commas," he said. "No one was using near field communication in the States, then Apple just says we have decided to do it."