Historically, credit unions were preceded by widespread development of credit cooperation in many countries of Europe and America. Credit union promotes the effective conservation of personal funds of its members, giving them the loans from the funds of the credit union, as well as the sharing of savings in education, housing, health care and other programs of social support and social development of its members. Contributions from of shareholders in credit unions in no way can be considered as borrowed funds, they come from the shareholders and for the shareholders and can not be used to provide services to third parties. The relationship between credit unions and shareholders arise from the membership and are not customer relationship. Credit unions base their activities on savings of shareholders, their shares and savings contributions, which make up the fund of mutual financial assistance - a source of cash loans to shareholders. 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.