The article discusses the issue of new solutions concerning a fine introduced to the Criminal Code and the Penalty Execution Code by an abundant amendment to criminal law of 20 February 2015. The discussion focuses on the analysis of regulations that, in compliance with the legislator’s assumptions, are to make a fine the basic means of penal response to petty and medium-gravity crimes. The article also attempts to present a preliminary evaluation of case law in 2014 and 2016. The confrontation of the 2015 criminal law reform assumptions with the practice made it possible to state that the significant changes that took place in case law in general go in the right direction and should be positively assessed. Undoubtedly, the importance of a fine in the penal policy considerably rose and its share increased from 21.3% to 34.1%. It has also been established that non-custodial penalties dominated the structure of sentences. They accounted for 55.4% of convictions. In conformity with the reform assumptions, the share of the penalty of deprivation of liberty with conditional suspension of its execution clearly decreased (from 67.4% to 43.3%). What is alarming, there is an increase in the percentage of the adjudicated penalty of absolute deprivation of liberty (from 12.1% to 15.1%). Finally, the article analyses selected issues concerning the execution of a fine, especially the new regulation laid down in Article 12a PEC and Article 48a PEC, which are aimed at raising the efficiency of fine execution and reducing the scope of application of the substitute penalty of deprivation of liberty.