500 Shillings

The P#40 500 Shillings was part of a broader reissue program Tanzania undertook in the late 2000s to refresh its note series with improved security specifications — though by international standards, a watermark-only feature set was already considered minimal by 2010, when most comparable central banks had moved toward windowed threads and color-shifting inks. Thomas De La Rue's involvement here is unremarkable; the firm had held the Tanzania printing contract across multiple series going back decades.

The 120 × 60 mm format is notably small even within the regional East African series, making handling and sorting in high-volume rural markets more difficult — a practical complaint documented among Tanzanian traders at the time.