5 Pesos

The Banco Nacional de la República de Colombia was a state-owned institution created in 1880 under President Rafael Núñez specifically to displace the existing private banks and centralize currency issuance — a move that was politically contentious from the start. Private banks had been issuing their own notes under the free banking era of the 1870s, and the Nacional's notes were initially resisted. By 1886, the bank was operating under Núñez's second presidency and his Regeneración program, which consolidated federal authority at the expense of the old liberal federalist system.

ABNC produced the series from its New York facilities. The Colombian government's relationship with American Bank Note Company ran across multiple decades and denominations, making plate reuse and design borrowing between issues a known complication for catalogers.