Japan’s Resona Bank cuts ties with Ripple’s Money Tap remittance service

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Japan’s Resona Bank has cut ties with Money Tap, a remittance service based on Ripple’s blockchain platform. The bank revealed that the partnership would officially end on May 13. Resona Bank joined Money Tap on October 4, 2018, just a day after Ripple and partners launched the service.

Resona Bank didn’t disclose the reason it had decided to end the partnership. However, it promised its clients that it would continue improving its services.

The bank, considered to be the fifth largest in Japan, was one of the three banks that were using Money Tap. The other two are Suruga Bank and SBI Sumishin Net Bank. According to Ripple, the platform provided the banks with real-time interbank money transfers. It relied on Ripple’s xCurrent product which ensures end-to-end tracking and operational consistency. Money Tap reportedly allows users to send funds at no cost using telephone numbers or QR codes. To enhance security, it used biometric features including fingerprint scanning.

Ripple developed the product in partnership with SBI, Japan’s giant financial services group. At the time of its launch, it garnered great interest from financial services providers for its speed and convenience. Just two weeks ago, SBI announced that 13 banks had invested in the platform and had joined as shareholders. According to SBI’s press release, the platform will receive more investment later on this year from other interested banks. However, none of these banks are using the product yet.

And while Money Tap is struggling to add more users, another Ripple product targeting banks has done extremely well. One Pay FX by Banco Santander registered a 230 percent growth in just its first eight months of operation. The product is available in Spain, Brazil, the UK and Poland, some of Santander’s biggest markets.

https://twitter.com/XrpCenter/status/1108965578331426824

One Pay FX uses xCurrent, just like Money Tap. xCurrent is one of the three products by Ripple that target banks and other financial services providers. However, it doesn’t use Ripple’s native crypto, XRP. xRapid, the product that uses XRP has continued to struggle to onboard clients, perhaps due to the volatility of the XRP token. In fact, of the over 200 banks that use Ripple’s blockchain solutions, less than 15 uses XRP to process transactions. This is despite XRP offering higher speeds and lower transactions fees.