50 Centavos

The Banco Español de la Habana was the sole bank of issue in colonial Cuba, operating under a royal charter that gave it a monopoly tightly controlled from Madrid. By 1889, that arrangement was already under strain — Cuban nationalist sentiment was building toward what would become the Ten Years' War's long aftermath, and the bank's notes circulated in an economy distorted by the sugar trade and Spanish fiscal extraction.

The American Bank Note Company handled the printing, as it did for much of Latin American paper currency in this period. The choice reflected the ABNC's dominance of the market, not any particular political alignment with the United States.