The Papua New Guinean kina

What served as money before the kina

The Bank of Papua New Guinea describes a long stretch of exchange without coins. Families and clans produced most of what they needed and traded the rest. Before colonisation, which the bank dates from about the 1880s, many kinds of traditional money were in use, among them tabu shells, pig tusks, kina shells and toea shells, and they worked as payment, as a standard of value and as a store of wealth.

The colonial period brought a run of foreign money. Papua New Guineans used German marks and pfennigs, Japanese yen, Australian pounds, shillings and pence, and from 1966 the Australian dollar.

Why two shells gave the currency its names

The bank chose kina and toea because both were known on the coasts, on the islands and in the highlands. The word kina exists in Tok Pisin and in Kuanua, the Tolai language, and names the gold-lipped pearl shell used for trade, kept as wealth and worn as adornment.

The toea is a shell from the Motuan villages, used for trade and in bride price ceremonies. It was valued because it comes from deep water and can be gathered only at certain times of the year. Once the flesh is removed the shell is worked into armbands, which then serve as payment and as stored wealth.

How the kina took over from the Australian dollar

On 19 April 1975 the bank issued K2, K5 and K10 notes and a K1 coin, with toea coins of 1, 2, 5, 10 and 20. The kina was exchanged at par with the Australian dollar, and the notes kept the Australian colour for each value. For eight months both currencies were accepted. On 1 January 1976, which the bank calls the day of full monetary independence, the Australian dollar was withdrawn and ceased to be legal tender.

The kina stayed at parity until 25 July 1976. It was then revalued to A$1.05, revalued again on 28 November to A$1.1812 and devalued on 13 December to A$1.155.

What the notes and coins carry

The front of each note shows the national crest with patterns from the provinces, and the back shows traditional tools for fishing, hunting and gardening. A K20 note followed in 1977 and a K50 in 1990, by the bank's own history. Papua New Guinea began printing its notes on polymer in 1991, and every denomination was polymer by 2008. Paper notes stopped being accepted by the bank on 31 December 2014.

The K1 coin is round with a hole in the centre. A smaller version arrived in 2006, and the large one was demonetised from 31 December 2008, the year a bimetallic K2 coin came in to replace the K2 note. The 1 and 2 toea coins were withdrawn in 2006 and stopped being legal tender on 19 April 2007. A 50 toea coin existed only in commemorative issues from 1980 until 2021, when a circulating version took the birdwing butterfly from the withdrawn 1 toea.

Commemorative issues mark dates in the country's own history: a K10 note for the new National Parliament Building in April 1985, and in September 2025 a K50 note for fifty years of independence, with the Raggiana bird-of-paradise, alongside a new 50 toea coin showing the flag. The IMF's Finance and Development reported in December 2025 that a K100 note honouring Julius Chan, the first finance minister, would follow.