10 Dollars Foreign Exchange Certificate

Bank Polska Kasa Opieki — Pekao — issued these Foreign Exchange Certificates as a mechanism to capture hard currency from Poles receiving remittances from abroad, primarily from the diaspora in the United States and Western Europe. The certificates were not freely convertible; they could only be spent at the Pewex chain of hard-currency shops, which stocked Western goods unavailable through normal socialist retail channels. This made them function less like banknotes and more like scrip tied to a parallel economy the state ran deliberately alongside the złoty.

The 1960 series predates the later Pewex expansion of the 1970s and 80s, so circulation volumes were lower. Surviving examples in any condition are less common than the later issues.