50 Bolivianos

The Banco Mercantil was one of several Bolivian private banks of issue operating under the 1890 Ley de Bancos, which granted chartered institutions the right to circulate their own notes. That arrangement collapsed definitively in 1911 when the Bolivian government moved to centralize emission, rendering private bank notes like this one obsolete within a few years of issue.

American Bank Note Company produced the series, as they did for most of South America's private banking sector at this period — the commercial relationship was essentially a monopoly of prestige printing for the continent.