40 Centavos

The Banco Nacional del Perú was established in 1872 with backing from a consortium of Lima merchants, making it one of the earliest joint-stock banks in the country permitted to issue circulating notes. This 40 centavos denomination belongs to the bank's founding series — fractional values like this were a direct response to the chronic shortage of small silver coin in everyday commerce.

American Bank Note Company handled the printing, as was common for South American issuers seeking engraved quality they could not yet produce domestically. The bank itself collapsed in 1877, well before Peru's catastrophic War of the Pacific, which means surviving notes from this series predate the financial destruction that followed.