How banks worked around year 1500 or so?
Been playing Assassin’s Creed recently and had a thought. How actually banks worked back then?
I mean a guy could show up and ask for a loan. Let’s say he wants 1000 for a week. All goes well -> the guy returns money with interest. But the other outcome is – the guy decides to move to another city or simply don’t go to the bank. How the bank would get its money back, considering that there were a lot less documents and such for each person? Probably some of them didn’t have an ID or some kind of an equivalent.
Wife suggested that bank didn’t have out loans to poor people at all because was impossible to know whether the guy returns money or not.
In: Economics
Almost no-one had any ID. People pretended to be emperors, never mind posing as peasants. Basically the bank or someone connected with the bank knows the guy and where he lives, works etc, or they have someone more prominent vouch for them who becomes liable for his loan should he skedaddle. There are no tvs, phones or computers; very little isolation. It woud be very weird for someone to live in the time and have access to a bank without their community of hundreds knowing them very well.
15th century banks absolutely did give loans to poor people. The Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the oldest bank in the world, was set up to do exactly that.
Latest Answers