50 Rupees Kandy; Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China

The Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China was one of the Exchange Banks operating across British Asia under Royal Charter — distinct from the later Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, with which it is routinely confused. This Kandy branch issue dates from a period when the upcountry Ceylon trade, particularly in coffee, was generating enough commercial volume to justify a local point of payment designation on notes printed in London by Perkins, Bacon.

The coffee boom collapsed catastrophically in the 1870s and 1880s due to *Hemileia vastatrix* — the fungal blight that wiped out virtually the entire Ceylon crop. The bank itself was absorbed into the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China in 1892, making branch-specific survivor notes from this period genuinely uncommon.