Historically, credit unions were preceded by widespread development of credit cooperation in many countries of Europe and America. Corporate credit unions are united on a cooperative basis in the Central Credit Union (US Central Credit Union). The main advantage of credit unions consists in transparency, controllability, governance for shareholders. In some cases, the initiators of credit unions can be trade unions, associations such as social support centers and others. 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. On the consumer credit market in the U.S. credit unions are on the third place after the commercial banks and finance companies and are ahead of savings institutions, not taking into account the loans on real estate.