Resona Bank, a corporate and retail bank based in Osaka, Japan, has recently announced that it will officially end its existing partnership with Ripple-backed remittance app MoneyTap next month on May 13.

Resona Bank is part of Resona Group, once Japan’s fifth largest banking group in the country. The bank’s brief statement on its website did not provide any details as to why it made the decision to “cancel the cooperation” and pull out of the project. Its partnership with MoneyTap began just about six month ago on October 4 last year, along with SBI Sumishin Net Bank, and Suruga Bank.

MoneyTap was first launched around that same time, and is a joint venture between XRP-creator Ripple, and Japanese financial services giant SBI Holdings. MoneyTap is meant to use Ripple’s blockchain solution xCurrent to enable domestic bank-to-bank transfers in real time”. One of the original banks involved in the project, SBI Sumishin Net Bank, is an Internet bank established by SBI Holdings and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank.  

Last month, SBI Holdings announced that 11 other local banks had joined SBI Sumishin Net Bank and Suruga Bank in investing in MoneyTap, although it said it will remain as the project’s single largest shareholder with a 93.5% stake.