Recent investigations seem to favor a cosmological dynamics according to which the accelerated expansion of the Universe may have already peaked and is now slowing down again [1]. As a consequence, the cosmic acceleration may be a transient phenomenon. We investigate a toy model that reproduces such a background behavior as the result of a time-dependent coupling in the dark sector which implies a cancelation of the ``bare" cosmological constant. With the help of a statistical analysis of Supernova Type Ia (SNIa) data we demonstrate that for a certain parameter combination a transient accelerating phase emerges as a pure interaction effect.