5 Dollars Foreign Exchange Certificate

Pekao's Foreign Exchange Certificates were a deliberate mechanism for extracting hard currency from Poles with access to dollar remittances — primarily emigrants sending money back from the West. The state-controlled bank issued these certificates in lieu of actual dollars, which were immediately absorbed into national reserves. Holders could spend them only at Pewex hard-currency stores, buying imported goods otherwise unobtainable through normal retail channels.

The 1960 series predates the more widely encountered later issues. Pewex itself wasn't formalized as a retail chain until 1972, so early certificates like this one were redeemable through a more limited network of outlets.