Principles of cooperative democracy and interaction were adequate to the purposes for which people joined credit unions. The uniqueness of credit unions is that they put together the principles and benefits of financial cooperatives, consumer cooperatives and mutual aid funds, born once by trade unions. The main advantage of credit unions consists in transparency, controllability, governance for shareholders. The relationship of shareholders with credit union are not client-based, they are co-operative, based on different principles and standards, in particular, on the principles of the law of obligations. 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.