100 Lire Istituto Centrale delle Banche Popolari Italiane

The Istituto Centrale delle Banche Popolari Italiane was not a central bank in any governmental sense — it functioned as a cooperative central body for Italy's network of popular banks, the banche popolari. These small-denomination notes from the mid-1970s were issued as fiduciary money during Italy's chronic coin shortage, a shortage so severe that shops, transit operators, and businesses routinely substituted telephone tokens, candy, and privately issued scrip rather than make change in lire.

The Banca d'Italia tacitly permitted this parallel circulation rather than address the underlying minting bottleneck. Notes of this type were redeemable only within the issuing institution's network, which created practical problems for anyone holding them outside that system.