Bon towarowy PeKaO (or simply Bon PeKaO) cheques were substitute

legal tender Legal tender is a form of money that courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment for any monetary debt. Each jurisdiction determines what is legal tender, but essentially it is anything which when offered ("tendered") in ...

(

complementary currency A complementary currency is a currency or medium of exchange that is not necessarily a national currency, but that is thought of as supplementing or complementing national currencies. Complementary currencies are usually not legal tender and thei ...

) used in the People's Republic of Poland. The Polish government, needing hard foreign currency, introduced them in 1960. Citizens of Poland had to exchange foreign currency they had into these notes (''bony'' in plural), issued by the government-controlled

Bank Pekao Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spółka Akcyjna, commonly using the shorter name Bank Pekao S.A., is a universal bank and currently the second largest bank in Poland with its headquarters in Warsaw. The Italian bank UniCredit used to own 59% of the comp ...

. They were only accepted in special shops in Poland (

Pewex Pewex () (short for ''Przedsiębiorstwo Eksportu Wewnętrznego'' – Internal Export Company) was a chain of hard-currency shops founded in 1972, during the Communist era in Poland that accepted payment only in United States dollars and other ...

Baltona Baltona (full: ''Baltona Foreign Trade Company Spółka Akcyjna'', former ''Baltona - zaopatrywanie statków'') is a Polish company acting mainly on a duty-free market in Poland and abroad. History Baltona was established on 3 September 1946, a ...

) where one could buy restricted, imported goods. Outside of these shops and the entire country, bony had no value and were not regarded as legal tender. In the 1950s and the 1960s, turnover of Western currency was strictly prohibited, and since 1 January 1960, pre-World War Two currency was purchased by the

national bank In banking, the term national bank carries several meanings: * a bank owned by the state * an ordinary private bank which operates nationally (as opposed to regionally or locally or even internationally) * in the United States, an ordinary p ...

, which paid for it with bony. From the 1970s, these regulations were not controlled as strictly as before, which resulted in a flourishing black market of foreign currency. All Polish citizens, who received money orders from the so-called “second payments area” ( pl:drugi obszar płatniczy), which covered

Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...

and North America, were not paid in real cash - dollars, pounds or marks, but instead, were issued with bony. This applied to those who received all kinds of payments from the West - salaries, pensions, monetary gifts, grants, donations. Bon towarowy PeKaO was used only for purchases at Pewex or Baltona stores, which were controlled by the government. These stores sold imported luxury products, otherwise not available on the domestic market - candy, coffee, chocolate, liquors, household appliances, cars. In the course of time, the bon became the unofficial second currency of Poland, due to rising inflation of the złoty. In the 1960s, the price of one bon was 70-80 złoty, in the 1970s it rose to 150 zł, and in 1981, to 400 złoty. By 1989, the price of one bon was 7000 złoty, and finally, after the monetary reform of

Leszek Balcerowicz Leszek Henryk Balcerowicz (pronounced ; born 19 January 1947) is a Polish economist, statesman, and Professor at Warsaw School of Economics. He served as Chairman of the National Bank of Poland (2001–2007) and twice as Deputy Prime Minister o ...

, the price of one bon (equivalent to one US dollar) was established at 9500 zł. Following the collapse of the Communist system, foreign currency trade became legal, which meant that the bony lost its raison d'être. Bony were printed in banknotes equivalent to 1 US cent, 2 cents, 5 cents, 10 cents, 20 cents, 50 cents, 1 US dollar, 2 dollars, 5 dollars, 10 dollars, 20 dollars, 50 dollars and 100 dollars. They first appeared on the market on 1 January 1960, and were almost always stamped at the back with the exception of some of the last post-1971 issue banknotes.

See also