The frustrated blockchain software company Ripple says its partnership with money transfer service MoneyGram has ended.
If it feels like deja vu, it’s because MoneyGram dropped Ripple already last month due to the SEC’s ongoing case against the company. In December, the SEC claimed that Ripple’s sales of cryptocurrency XRP were unregistered security offerings.
The MoneyGram move was part of a larger trend in the industry – exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase have already removed XRP, and digital asset manager Grayscale has distanced itself from Ripple.
But at the time, a Ripple spokesman said Decipher that its multi-year partnership agreement with MoneyGram ‘was still in place’ and that it ‘looks'[ing] forward to find a way forward. ‘
Now, Ripple says in a careful diplomatic press release that the two companies have come to a mutual understanding to officially ‘terminate our current partnership agreement’.
Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, tweeted that both Ripple and MoneyGram “are both committed to revisiting [the partnership] in the future.”
MoneyGram did not immediately respond to a request for comment.