5 Pesos

El Banco Internacional de Guatemala was one of several private banks authorized to issue currency under Guatemala's late-nineteenth-century banking law, a system that allowed multiple institutions to circulate their own notes simultaneously — a source of chronic public confusion and periodic financial instability. Waterlow & Sons handled a substantial share of Latin American private bank printing during this period, and their Guatemala work was no exception.

The series ran across nearly two decades, which means date examination matters. Notes from the later years of issue, toward 1916, were circulating against the backdrop of wartime commodity disruptions that hit coffee-dependent Guatemala hard.