Ripple: First Bank in Japan To Cancel Cooperation With Money Tap Powered By Ripple Tech

Recently, it was announced that several banks would join the SBI-backed Money Tap app for the purposes of bettering cashless payments for small transfers, using Ripple’s xCurrent product. However, it has come to be known that Resona Bank is the first bank to discontinue their participation on Money Tap. The bank announced in an official statement., with the official date of cancellation being May 13, 2019.

The notice reads,

About the cooperation cancellation with the remittance application “Money Tap” Cooperation cancellation date: May 13, 2019 (Mon)
Thank you very much for using Resona Bank. Resona Bank will cancel the cooperation with the money transfer application “Money Tap” which started on October 4, 2018 on May 13, 2019. We will continue to improve our service further in the future, so we ask for your understanding.

13 banks had joined the Money Tap initiative, the purpose of which was described as follows,

Money Tap’ is a safe, real-time and comfortable app that allows users to transfer money between individuals directly and can deposit money directly from a bank to a bank account 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In addition to the bank account number, we also have a remittance function that uses a mobile phone number or QR code (* 2, 3) to specify the remittance destination, and by combining this with biometric authentication such as fingerprints, the user experience (UX ) and security.

SBI is a firm backer of Ripple, with CEO Yoshitaka Kitao keen on getting banks to use Ripple’s technology.