500 Francs

The Banque des États de l'Afrique Centrale — the BEAC — replaced the earlier BCEAEC in 1972 as part of a broader reorganization of the franc CFA zone in Central Africa, and these P#1 notes for the Central African Republic represent the earliest issues under that new institutional arrangement. Each of the six member states received its own country-specific notes printed from shared base plates, differentiated by letter codes and national identifiers — a practical solution for a monetary union that needed both uniformity and distinct national attribution.

The Banque de France printing relationship with the CFA zone dated back decades before independence, and continued largely uninterrupted into the 1970s.