5 Francs With Decree

Pick 15 exists because of a specific wartime inconvenience: the Banque de France's regular printing capacity was severely strained by the need to produce notes for metropolitan France during the war, and smaller colonial denominations kept getting deprioritized. The 1916 decree authorizing this issue gave the Banque de l'Indo-Chine legal cover to circulate a note at a denomination previously considered too low for a chartered colonial bank.

Dupuis and Léveillé were among the most accomplished figures working in French engraving at the time — Dupuis as a medalist, Léveillé as a banknote engraver trained in the classical Parisian tradition. Their collaboration on low-denomination colonial paper was unusual; that level of craft was rarely directed at five-franc notes intended for Indochinese circulation.