50 Ðồng

The National Bank of Vietnam was established in 1951 under the State of Vietnam, still nominally within the French Union, and this 1956 series marked one of the first substantive efforts to issue currency fully under the authority of the newly independent Republic of Vietnam following the 1954 Geneva Accords. Security Banknote Company of Philadelphia printed for a number of smaller and newly sovereign nations during the 1950s, handling work that De La Rue or the American Bank Note Company occasionally declined or couldn't schedule.

The question mark against SBNC's contract date in most references reflects incomplete archive access rather than genuine doubt about the printer — the plate style and paper are consistent with their mid-decade output.