Asia · Country guide Curated

Singapore

From the first confirmed circulating commercial-bank notes in 1849 to orchids, ships and modern civic identity.

View 3 specimens Issue catalogue

Currency

Singapore dollar SGD

Currency starts 1967

Paper-money timeline 31 May 1849

National / central issue 12 June 1967

Current issuer Monetary Authority of Singapore

The essential story

Start with the chronology, not the current issuer.

Singapore launched its own dollar notes on 12 June 1967. The national series begins with orchids, then moves through birds and ships before arriving at the Portrait Series, which centres the country’s first president, Yusof Ishak.

The documented circulating-note story begins with the Oriental Bank’s Singapore branch issues released on 31 May 1849—not with the 1967 national dollar. Straits currency, Japanese occupation money and the Malaya and British Borneo issues form the essential pre-independence context.

History in layers

Banknote eras

Dates describe what began in each period—not necessarily when every note stopped circulating.

1849–1966

Commercial-bank, regional and colonial issues

Oriental Bank’s Singapore branch released confirmed circulating $5 and $100 notes on 31 May 1849. Later commercial-bank issues, Straits currency, wartime occupation notes and the Malaya and British Borneo dollar preceded the national Singapore dollar.
1967–1976

Orchid Series

Singapore’s first national notes paired local orchids with the new state’s symbols and institutions.
1976–1984

Bird Series

Native birds became the visual anchor while reverse designs recorded Singapore’s rapid development.
1984–1999

Ship Series

Vessels traced the island’s maritime history, from traditional craft to modern container shipping.
1999–present

Portrait Series

Yusof Ishak anchors a family of designs focused on education, government, culture, youth and national life.
2002

MAS becomes the full currency issuer

The Board of Commissioners of Currency Singapore merged into the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Collector’s lens

Details worth cataloguing

Read the issuing authority

Board and MAS imprints separate otherwise similar issues and help place a note in the institutional timeline.

Paper and polymer belong together

Portrait designs exist across substrates; record the material rather than treating polymer as a separate currency.

Signatures and prefixes matter

Chairman signatures, serial prefixes, replacement issues and commemorative variants are useful catalogue fields.

A cross-border currency relationship

Singapore and Brunei currencies have been exchangeable at par under their interchangeability agreement since 1967.

Issue catalogue

Series and denominations

The curated history is ready; the full issue checklist has not yet been generated.

Full issue research is the next layer.

The country guide above is already available. Building the checklist runs multiple smaller historical searches, merges them and asks a separate Terra model to audit the chronology.

Primary reading