500 Escudos

The Banco Nacional Ultramarino, though headquartered in Lisbon, functioned as the note-issuing authority for Portuguese colonial territories rather than for the metropole itself. By 1932, the bank was simultaneously serving multiple overseas possessions, and the same Waterlow & Sons plates were often adapted across different colonial series with relatively minor alterations — a common economy of the period that can create attribution confusion when notes lack clear territorial designations.

Waterlow & Sons had a long working relationship with Portuguese colonial issuers through the interwar decades, though their later reputation was permanently damaged by the famous 1925 Alves Reis forgery scandal involving Banco de Portugal notes — a contract entirely separate from BNU's, but one that made Waterlow's quality controls a matter of public record.