20 000 Reis

Banco Nacional Ultramarino occupied an unusual institutional position: chartered in Lisbon in 1864, it held note-issuing rights across Portugal's overseas territories simultaneously, meaning the same parent bank was the authority of issue for colonies as far apart as Mozambique, Cape Verde, and Timor. This note — P#40 in the Angola series — was printed by Bradbury Wilkinson at their New Malden works, a firm better known at the time for security printing of stamps and bonds than for colonial currency.

By 1909, Angola's economy was still heavily shaped by rubber and ivory extraction, with credit infrastructure thin outside Luanda. High-denomination notes like this 20,000 Reis circulated primarily in merchant and administrative hands rather than in general retail trade.