2 Cents Foreign Exchange Certificate

Pekao's foreign exchange certificates were a mechanism for extracting hard currency from Poles receiving remittances from abroad — dollars, marks, and other Western currencies that the state desperately needed but couldn't compel citizens to surrender outright. By funneling those remittances through Bank Pekao, the government converted them into certificates redeemable only at Pewex hard-currency shops, keeping the actual foreign reserves firmly in state hands while offering consumer goods as the incentive to cooperate.

The 2-cent denomination is the smallest in the 1979 series, issued partly to handle exact-change transactions within the Pewex retail system.