20 Pesos de Oro

The Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires — not to be confused with the national Banco de la Nación Argentina, founded a decade later — was one of the oldest and most influential provincial issuing banks in the country, operating under a charter that predated Argentine national unification. By 1881, provincial note issuance was already under political pressure from Buenos Aires city's federalization the previous year, which had dramatically complicated the relationship between provincial and national monetary authority.

ABNC's work for Argentine provincial banks in this period was produced from their Maiden Lane facilities. PS#540 sits in a series that circulated through a banking system still years away from forced consolidation under the 1890 crisis.