20 Francs

The Banque de l'Indochine's wartime displacement is the key to understanding why this note exists at all. With France occupied and normal print channels severed, the bank arranged emergency production through Emil M. Pikovsky Ltd in Jerusalem — then under British Mandate administration — making this one of the more geographically improbable printing commissions in colonial currency history.

Pikovsky was a commercial printer, not a specialist security press, and the output reflects that. Registration inconsistencies are common across surviving examples. The series was intended for use in French territories in the Pacific and Indian Ocean, where the wartime supply of circulating notes had become critical by 1945.