The fifty-dollar note was first issued undated in the 1860s by the

Oriental Bank Corporation The Oriental Bank Corporation (), or "OBC", was a British imperial bank founded in India in 1842 which grew to be prominent throughout the Far East. As an Exchange bank, the OBC was primarily concerned with the finance of trade and exchanges of ...

, the Mercantile Bank, the

Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Standard Chartered Hong Kong (officially Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Limited, ) is a licensed bank incorporated in Hong Kong and a subsidiary of Standard Chartered. It is also one of the three commercial banks licensed by the Hong Kong ...

but a confirmed date for this bank is 1879, followed by

The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited (), commonly known as HSBC (), was the parent entity of the multinational HSBC banking group until 1991, and is now its Hong Kong-based Asia-Pacific subsidiary. The largest bank in Hong K ...

in 1877. The

National Bank of China The National Bank of China () was a bank in Hong Kong. It was founded in 1891 by a wealthy and influential Guangzhou family. It is the first banknote issuer to be financed by Chinese merchants A merchant is a person who trades in commodities p ...

also issued this denomination in the 1890s, but they are seldom seen. There was a continuous issue till the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

in different colours and dimensions, but they ceased to be printed between 1934 and 1941, depending on the bank. After the war no banks resumed to issue this denomination. They were resumed by The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in 1968 the Standard Chartered Bank in 1970 as a blue note. This was then changed to purple in 1985 with a new smaller version and then to the current green issue in 2003. The

Bank of China The Bank of China (BOC; ) is a Chinese majority state-owned commercial bank headquartered in Beijing and the fourth largest bank in the world. The Bank of China was founded in 1912 by the Republican government as China's central bank, rep ...

issued their version in 1994. The colour was made uniform when green for all banknotes was adopted.

References

*Ma Tak Wo 2004, Illustrated Catalogue of Hong Kong Currency, Ma Tak Wo Numismatic Co., LTD Kowloon Hong Kong. {{Authority control Banknotes of Hong Kong Fifty-base-unit banknotes