500 Francs

The BCEAO's 500 Francs denomination has long been the workhorse of daily commerce across the eight-member UEMOA zone — Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo — a currency union that has maintained the CFA Franc's fixed peg to the Euro (and before 1999, the French Franc) under a guarantee arrangement with the French Treasury. That institutional dependency has kept Banque de France printing contracts running for decades despite persistent political debate within member states about monetary autonomy.

The "T" suffix in the Pick reference designates this as a specimen or trial piece rather than a circulating issue — worth noting when assessing why the serial numbering may differ from production examples.