5 Pesos

Banco Prendario de Soto was a pawnbroking institution, not a commercial bank in the conventional sense — its notes were backed by pledged collateral rather than metallic reserves or government guarantee. These quasi-fiduciary instruments circulated in a Colombia still operating under the liberal banking legislation of 1870–1871, which had opened the door to a proliferation of private issuing banks, many of them short-lived and thinly capitalized.

Litografía de B. Paredes was a local Bogotá printer with no international reputation for security printing, which makes this note a product of purely domestic production at a time when most Colombian banks of any ambition sent their plates to American Bank Note Company in New York.