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
Your wife is correct – they weren’t customer banks in the modern sense. As an ordinary person you couldn’t go and get a loan or open an account. Rather, the italian medieval banks were merchant banks that mostly provided credit to merchant expeditions or voyages. If a certain merchant tried to do what you describe they would lose their reputation and possibly standing with organizations like guilds, and basically their livelihood would be ruined. Medieval society ran on support networks of family, patronage, and guilds – without those, you were nothing, and your livelihood and even personal safety could be seriously at risk. So a merchant would definitely not want to risk that
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