1 Franc

Tunisia's Direction Générale des Finances stepped in as a note-issuing authority during WWI because the French Protectorate's normal banking supply chains had collapsed under wartime pressure. Small denominations were the acute problem — coins had effectively vanished from circulation, hoarded or melted, and the Banque de l'Algérie could not fill the gap quickly enough.

The entirely local production — lithography and letterpress both handled within Tunis by two separate firms — was unusual for colonial French-administered territory, where metropolitan printing was strongly preferred. The official stamp substituted for more sophisticated security, a common workaround when intaglio printing capacity was unavailable.