1 Franc Comptes courants

The Banque Nationale de Belgique introduced this miniature 1 Franc note in August 1914 as an emergency measure — coin hoarding had stripped small change from circulation within days of the German invasion. The note was explicitly tied to the comptes courants system, meaning it functioned as a transferable claim against current accounts held at the bank rather than as conventional fiduciary currency, a distinction that mattered legally even if ordinary users ignored it.

The extreme small format was deliberate: paper this size was harder to counterfeit convincingly with the printing technology available to an occupying force in 1914.