10 Cents - York University cafeteria scrip

York University issued cafeteria scrip in the late 1980s as a meal-plan management tool — students purchased scrip in bulk and spent it across campus food services rather than handling cash at the counter. The system was common among North American universities before magnetic-stripe meal cards rendered paper tokens obsolete through the 1990s.

BA International, the successor identity of the British American Bank Note Company, printed this in Ottawa — the same facility that produced Canadian federal currency. Contracting a security printer for low-denomination cafeteria scrip was not unusual; universities needed counterfeit resistance, however modest the face value.