History of Banks in the World. Learn about the emergence and development of banks

The history of the world's banks has blended with the history of commerce, from the time when the first money changers worked on terraces, until the emergence of luxury banking branches in the twentieth century.

The history of the emergence of banks in the world

The term bank (derived from the word "banc" meaning "terrace") appeared around the eighth century, generally referring to Jews who moved from town to town to sell goods and to exchange for municipalities or princes, in particular.

This practice remained the main concern of financiers for many centuries, because trade was not very active. This is until the period when the era of the Lombards began, who were merchants and moneylenders at the same time, settled in many cities, and controlled all commercial activities.

They therefore very quickly became influential persons, both commercially and financially, which is why the princes granted them many privileges to which they responded, in return, by granting these princes important monetary loans, often tasked with evaluating the accounts of the city or the accounts of notables.

Lombards are rightly considered the ancestors of modern bankers, but the twelfth century saw another event that gave the profession its true prosperity: the Crusades.

Thanks to these campaigns, the needs they created in the West, and the influx of gold and silver brought about by the invasion, trade and industry flourished greatly. At the same time, banks multiplied and specialized, and ended up controlling the totality of economic life.

Medieval: The Rise of Banks

At that time, fairs were the most important commercial centers, where currency exchange was opened. It was therefore not surprising that bankers frequented exhibitions in order to facilitate these various operations. These bankers ended up organizing all exchanges and in addition providing merchants with the money necessary for their purchases.

Thus, bankers first operated separately, and then grouped into powerful craft cooperatives, in order to minimize risk and cover more important operations. However, the decadence of the exhibitions at the end of the Middle Ages put an end to their dominance. Since then, private banks have been flourishing.

Knights Templar and the Evolution of Banks

At the outset, it should be noted that the original activity of this religious and military system (the Templars), founded in Jerusalem in 1108, was to protect Christian pilgrims. But thanks to numerous gifts and privileges, the Templiers, or Les Templiers, quickly amassed a huge fortune that was then devoted to banking activities. They gave money to kings to carry out their crusades, rented impregnable treasuries to the rich, and received their deposits.

Until that time, financial transactions were recorded in the books of accounts at the time of their conduct, but the structurals made innovations in this area, by recording all today's receipts on one page, and recording all withdrawals of funds on another page, thus putting in front of them an accurate picture of today's accounts.

But their financial strength brought them many envy. In 1307, the King of France, Philippe Lebel, filed a famous lawsuit against them, and their superiors were imprisoned or executed, and a few years later, the Pope dissolved their monastic system.

The first private banks appeared in Italy, located at the gateway to trade with the East. In Sian and Florence, the merchants of the casualty formed the so-called "bank companies". These companies were made up of members from the same family, with some friends subscribing with them later, and thus always kept the names of their founders. Among these names we will only mention: the Bardi,the Peruzani and the Tolomei.

At that time, these banks opened agencies in all cities of Europe, where they received the deposits of wealthy notables and invested them by granting interest-bearing loans.

Banks in the Renaissance

This new form of activity grew during the Renaissance. But after the discovery of the New World and its boundless wealth, bankers' transactions reached unprecedented proportions, and financiers thus became the true kings of the era.

Charles V thus received the crown of the Holy Roman Empire only thanks to the German banker Jacob Fougère, who gave voters a sum of money to fight the candidacy of François I.

In addition, almost all strata of the population have benefited from this enrichment. German businessmen quickly realized the possibility of expanding the size of their customers and profits by attracting deposits of small savers, and thus banks entered the field of public property.

Banknote currency

Since the Middle Ages, bankers have handed depositors receipts or certificates of deposit. These documents allowed everyone who had them to recover their money at any time.

At the end of the sixteenth century, and especially in the seventeenth century, the practice of "endorsement", which allows the person concerned to pay his debts by means of this paper, expanded. This method quickly became so popular that many business transactions were carried out with these documents.

These certificates of deposit, however, had a significant drawback that prevented them from trading more freely. It was interest-producing, meaning that the beneficiary of this bill of exchange was entitled, not only to the amount charged to the paper, but also to a small premium.

To remedy this real situation, Palmstosh, the founder of Stockholm Bank, worked on issuing certificates of deposit that did not grant interest. The banks of England and Scotland were among the first banks to benefit from this renovation, and to improve it, by issuing notes of equal value and equal to a specific weight of a precious metal, and thus paper currency came into being.

Banks in the modern era

In the nineteenth century, the number of trading banks in all countries doubled, and none of them had a monopoly on issuing currency, so that a very large number of banknotes were traded within each country. This is almost the same phenomenon that prevailed in the Middle Ages when princes minted their own coins.

But around the fifteenth century this privilege became the monopoly of the state. This was the case until the second half of the nineteenth century, when the issuing authority was reserved in each country, to a single bank, the central bank.

However, this "adoption of society" arouses emotions, especially after the proliferation of bank windows, during the last two decades, in major cities: in 1970 there were 1200,8000 automatic windows in France, and now in Morocco, for example, there are more than 28,<> automatic windows throughout the Kingdom. There are now <> million bank accounts, according to Bank Al-Maghrib.

Thus, the bank is no longer particularly associated with industry and traders, but the bank's intervention in private affairs is due to the popularization of rent as a type of income. On the one hand, there is the worker who is looking for an easy way to make his own business more than he is looking for savings.

On the other hand, there is a banker who provides a quick service, in exchange for a share of this money, which is what souls aspire to:

"Your money matters to me"

Today's huge number of checks would have led to overcrowding had it not been for the fact that information and technology had made it easier to process such a large block of paper.