20 Soles

The Banco del Perú was one of several private commercial banks chartered in Lima during the early 1870s credit boom, a period when the Peruvian government's guano revenues were beginning to falter and private banking had stepped in to fill the resulting liquidity gap. By 1877, that expansion was already under serious stress — the guano market had collapsed, nitrate revenues were not yet sufficient compensation, and the fiscal crisis that would ultimately detonate the War of the Pacific was taking shape. Notes from this bank circulated against a backdrop of genuine public uncertainty about convertibility.

ABNC engraved and printed for numerous South American issuers during this period, and the Banco del Perú series was among several contracted in New York during the early-to-mid 1870s.