On August 1, 1885, the first Bulgarian banknote with a face value of 20 leva was printed in St. Petersburg. Today, this banknote is kept in the Gabrovo Historical Museum.
In the first years after the Liberation, mainly silver coins were in circulation on the territory of Bulgaria, a large part of which were physically depreciated.
The lev was adopted as the Bulgarian currency shortly after the Liberation of the country, when on June 4, 1880, a Law on the Right to Mint Coins in the Principality was adopted, and the first coins were minted the following year.
The law adopted in 1880 A law on the right to mint coins in the Principality provided that fiscal accounting be kept in levs, determined the amount of gold, silver or copper in the various coins and limited the total money supply to 15 million levs. The lev had a value equal to that of the French franc. The use of coins was permitted, both from the Latin Monetary Union and from other countries that the state accepted at rates approved by the Ministry of Finance.
At the end of 1884, the parliament allowed the issuance of silver coins for another 10 million levs, and for this purpose a large amount of rubles collected by the state as taxes were melted down into coins. Over the next two years, the government and the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) managed to finally withdraw Russian silver coins from circulation.
The BNB began issuing banknotes in 1885. The first issue was relatively small (213,000 leva) and was poorly received by the people. The reason for this was both the distrust in the new paper money and the gold plating of the banknotes.
The first Bulgarian banknote bears the number 000001. Its denomination is 20 leva, the dimensions are 150 by 97 mm, and it has a BNB watermark on it. The face of the banknote is a brown square on a light ochre background, and the state coat of arms is depicted in the left corner.