5 Shillings Sterling

The Cape of Good Hope Bank was established in 1825, making it one of the earliest joint-stock banks in southern Africa. By 1828 it was already competing with the older Lombaard Bank and the newly chartered South African Bank for the limited commercial activity of a still-colonial Cape Town. Notes of this denomination circulated primarily in local retail trade, though the sterling designation reflects the Cape Colony's formal adoption of British sterling as its official monetary standard following the end of Dutch East India Company rule.

Local printing at Cape Town at this date was technically rudimentary. The note predates any significant security printing infrastructure at the Cape, which makes surviving examples exceptionally fragile and prone to ink oxidation along fold lines.