Lao kip establishment of the Lao People's Democratic Republic. Kaysone Phomvihane is pictured on the obverse of the 2,000, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, and 100,000 kip banknotes. The Bank of Laos governor announced on January 25, 2012 that the Bank of Laos would issue 100,000 Kip banknotes as a regular issue on February 1, 2012 (but dated 2011) to encourage Lao people to use the national currency instead of U.S. dollars and Thai baht. Lao kip The kip (; code: LAK; sign: ₭ or ₭N; ; officially: ເງີນກີບລາວ, lit. "currency Lao kip") is the currency of Laos since 1952. Historically, one kip
Non-decimal currency Non-decimal currency A non-decimal currency is a currency that has sub-units that are a non-decimal fraction of the main unit, i.e. the number of sub-units in a main unit is not a power of 10. Today only two countries in the world use non-decimal currencies. Both of these countries are in Africa. These are Mauritania (1 ouguiya = 5 khoums) and Madagascar (1 ariary = 5 iraimbilanja). However these are only theoretically non-decimal, as in both cases the value of the main unit is so low that the sub-unit is too small to be of any practical use and coins