5 Rufiyaa

The Maldives issued its first modern paper currency series in 1947, a decade before independence from British protection in 1965. Bradbury Wilkinson, the New Malden firm responsible for a large share of the colonial and post-colonial world's banknote output in this period, handled the printing — a routine arrangement for a British protectorate with no domestic printing capability whatsoever.

The Rufiyaa had replaced the older Lari-based accounting system in name only; traditional cowrie shell exchange persisted in the outer atolls well into the 1950s, making notes like this one largely a Malé phenomenon rather than a genuinely national currency.