20 Centavos

Payot, Upham & Co. operated out of San Francisco from the mid-nineteenth century and handled a significant share of Central American fiscal printing during the 1880s and 1890s — a period when no local infrastructure existed to produce secure currency in the region. Nicaragua's Tesoro Nacional relied on foreign contractors almost exclusively during this period, and the San Francisco firm was a practical geographic choice compared to the transatlantic alternative of London or Paris.

The P#18 series is scarce. Low-denomination fractional treasury notes from this era rarely survived in any quantity; they circulated hard and were discarded once worn beyond use.