500 Patacas

Banco da China entered Macao's currency-issuing arrangement in 1995, becoming the third note-issuing bank alongside Banco Nacional Ultramarino and the newly empowered Monetary Authority of Macao. The 2003 series was issued under the framework established after the 1999 handover to China, when the pataca remained the official currency — a deliberate continuity decision that kept the Hong Kong dollar widely accepted in parallel without formal legal-tender status for it.

The 500 pataca denomination is the highest in the BdC series, which makes surviving uncirculated examples less common than the lower values; high-denomination notes in Macao's cash economy were frequently used for large transactions and returned to banks in worn condition.