10 Patacas Banco Nacional Ultramarino

The Banco Nacional Ultramarino had been Macau's note-issuing authority since 1902, a privilege that survived the transition from Estado Novo to post-Carnation Revolution Portugal and remained intact right up to handover. By 1991, with the 1999 transfer to China already on the horizon and formally scheduled, the BNU was issuing into an increasingly peculiar political situation — a Portuguese colonial currency authority printing money for a territory whose fate was already sealed by the 1987 Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration.

Thomas De La Rue produced the series with a single watermark as the primary security feature, modest by the standards of the period.