20 Escudos

Banco Nacional Ultramarino occupied an unusual position in Portuguese colonial finance — it was a private institution holding the note-issuing concession for multiple overseas territories simultaneously, meaning the same parent designs often migrated across Angola, Mozambique, Timor, and beyond with only the overprint changed. This 1944 issue belongs to a wartime production run handled by Bradbury Wilkinson at their New Malden works, a firm that continued supplying colonial currency to Lisbon's overseas banks throughout the Second World War despite the obvious logistical complications of operating as a London security printer during the Blitz years.

Portugal's formal neutrality kept the colonial monetary apparatus functioning when other imperial systems fractured, and BNU notes of this period remained in circulation well past their intended replacement dates.