The reserve bank of india (RBI) is pausing its plans to release a digital currency, Indian news outlet the Hindu business line reported on Jan. 1.

India’s central bank had originally declared its intentions to consider a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in April of this year, at the time noting the establishment of an interdepartmental group to look into potential benefits and practicability.

In August, RBI confirmed the creation of the group, specifying that it absolutely was researching a CBDC that may be backed the rupee for reasons as well as the price of printing paper and also the rising popularity of using digital tokens.

Now, amid confusion over the group’s actual findings, that remain a mystery, Delhi has apparently had a change of heart.

“The government doesn’t want the digital currency any more. It thinks it's too early to even consider a digital currency,” Hindu business line quotes an unidentified source as saying.

The hesitancy echoes that that the govt. displayed last week on the subject of cryptocurrency regulation. Non-CBDC assets like Bitcoin (BTC) can stay in a grey area for the predictable future, one state minister told parliament, saying the problem was being approached with due caution.

Expectations had been that India would place some sort of restrictive framework in place in 2018, amid anger over RBI’s ongoing ban on crypto transaction process by banks.

The government, meanwhile, continues to hunt ways in which of reducing money usage in India whereas attaching transactions to consumers’ biometric information via the Aadhaar scheme — reportedly the world's biggest biometric ID system, that contains the records of over one billion individuals.

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Some parties appeared relieved at the shelving of the CBDC option.

“It is premature for RBI to launch crypto-rupee, as more understanding of the crypto economy need to be achieved,” local cryptocurrency exchange Belfrics founder Praveen Kumar told Hindu BusinessLine. He added:

“It is a right decision to delay the process and see how the publicly traded peer-to-peer economy is shaping up.”