20 Centavos

The Tesorería General de Nicaragua — the national treasury, not a central bank — issued this note directly under state authority at a time when Nicaragua had no formal banking institution of its own. The Homer Lee Bank Note Company, active for barely a decade before being absorbed by the American Bank Note Company in 1891, handled a number of Latin American contracts during its short existence, and the Nicaraguan treasury series of 1885 sits among its last documented foreign commissions.

Small-denomination fractional notes like this one circulated hard and survived poorly. Attrition rates for the centavo values in this series are significantly higher than for the peso denominations.