1 Dollar / 1 Piastre - Saigon

The Banque de l'Indochine was established by French imperial decree in 1875 with a note-issuing monopoly across French colonial territories in Southeast Asia. This issue, produced by the Banque de France's printing workshops in Paris, reflects a deliberate policy decision to keep plate production under metropolitan control rather than allow any local printing capacity in Saigon — a precaution against counterfeiting in a colony where the French administration never fully trusted the infrastructure it had built.

Dupuis was one of the most decorated medallists of the Paris Mint; his involvement here is the same arrangement used for French metropolitan small-denomination coinage of the period. Léveillé's engraving work is consistent with Banque de France intaglio standards of the 1880s–90s.

The dual denomination — Dollar and Piastre — reflects the note's function across both the Straits dollar zone and the French piastre system simultaneously.