20 Dollars Foreign Exchange Certificate

Bank Polska Kasa Opieki — Pekao — issued these Foreign Exchange Certificates as part of Poland's effort to capture hard currency held by Poles abroad, primarily the American diaspora sending remittances home. Introduced under the communist government's Pewex system, the certificates functioned as a controlled substitute for dollars: recipients in Poland could spend them at Pewex hard-currency shops for imported goods unavailable through normal retail channels, but could not legally convert them back into foreign cash.

The 1960 series predates the better-known 1969 redesign. Earlier issues are considerably scarcer in collector holdings, as fewer remittance transactions were processed in the program's initial years.