350 Lire Small cheque

San Marino's Banca Agricola Commerciale issued these small-denomination cheques in 1977 as a stopgap during a fractional currency shortage — a problem the republic periodically faced given its reliance on Italian lira coinage that often drained across the border into general Italian circulation. The 350 lire denomination is an odd figure, almost certainly calibrated to a specific transactional need rather than a round monetary unit.

Printed locally in Borgo Maggiore rather than contracted to an outside security printer, the inclusion of MICR encoding is notable for a note of this type and scale — machine-readable banking infrastructure on what is essentially emergency scrip.