Credit unions attract people in the first place by the opportunity to get cash loan (credit) - quickly and relatively inexpensively. Among the U.S. credit unions, there are three groups that differ in terms of assets, shareholders, and business services. Credit unions of the open type are still controlled by their members, but at the same time provide services to people who are not its members (external customers). U.S. credit unions have another significant difference from the credit cooperatives of farmers: the first have major proportion of short-term loans, the second - long and mostly in real estate. Corporate alliances are intermediaries between credit unions and financial markets.