The Reasons Underlying Retail Banking Homogenization in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

The paper looks into the process of originating and homogenizing the three credit union streams in the Czech lands territory at the time of the Habsburg Monarchy. The strongest from among the credit union streams was formed of charitable societies. The second stream was created through transforming consumers’ cooperatives to district economic credit unions, and the last of the significant streams came to our lands from Germany, in the form of Raiffeisen credit unions. Because of the demand for cheap credits, credit unions soon flourished into a significant group of credit providers, both in terms of the quantity of credits and the volume of provided finances. The main attention is paid to the change in orientation of credit unions after 1873, when Act No. 70, on associations, was passed, significantly influencing the change of originally charitable credit unions to financial institutions providing cheap credits to the general population. This transformation subsequently contributed to unification of the three streams.