20 Dollars American Express Travelers Cheque

American Express had been issuing travelers cheques since 1891, making it one of the longest-running continuous instruments of its kind in financial history. By 1993, the product was deep into a slow decline — credit card acceptance had expanded dramatically through the late 1980s, and the cheque's core advantage, universal merchant recognition without a bank account, was eroding fast. De La Rue's involvement here is unsurprising; they had printed for AmEx across multiple series and denominations for decades, with security production handled at their Gateshead and later Dunstable facilities.

The watermark remains the primary anti-counterfeiting feature on this issue — relatively modest by later standards.