20 Pounds Royal Bank of Scotland

The Royal Bank of Scotland's right to issue banknotes in Scotland is grounded in the Bank Notes (Scotland) Act 1845, which grandfathered existing issuers and has never been repealed. By the late 1980s, RBS was printing in volume through De La Rue at a moment when Scottish clearing banks were under recurring pressure from Westminster to justify separate issuance — pressure that never produced legislation but never fully disappeared either.

De La Rue's security thread specification for this period was an early embedded rather than windowed application, now considered relatively straightforward to examine but current practice for the era.