20 Francs - Union de commerçants de Béziers

Emergency fractional currency issued by a local merchants' association during the coin shortage that gripped France after the First World War. The Chambre de Commerce notes had become the standard vehicle for such stopgaps, but smaller commercial syndicates in provincial towns increasingly took matters into their own hands — the Union des Commerçants de Béziers being one such group, filling the gap with privately backed scrip redeemable against member businesses.

Cadenat Frères operated as a regional printing house in Béziers itself, which kept production costs and logistics local — unusual for notes of this scale, which more typically went to specialist security printers in Paris or Lyon.