5 Rufiyaa

Thomas De La Rue had printed Maldivian currency since the island nation established the Monetary Authority in 1981, making this a long-standing contract relationship rather than a one-off commission. The 1999 series to which this note belongs was the Authority's first major redesign in over a decade, updating security specifications across all denominations simultaneously. The 5 Rufiyaa occupied the lowest tier of the polymer-free issues in this series — all other regional central banks of comparable size were already transitioning to polymer substrates by this point, but the MMA retained cotton stock throughout the series run.