Trade and commerce have been around nearly as long as humans have been conscious. By nature, human beings have wants and desires; some have more wants than others, but the point is that all people are united by this basic desire.

As trade, commerce and industry developed over the millennia, some of the people who ‘wanted’ didn’t initially have enough to ‘give’ in order to get what they wanted. Thus developed one of the earliest forms of credit, IOUs. Applied to larger, civic expenses, credit was even used by the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians as early as 3,000BC.

It took a few thousand more years in order for currency, trade and record keeping to improve, however. By the early 1700s, the first business – a furniture business – advertised the sale of furniture which could be paid for in weekly installments. Since then, many businesses selling higher-priced goods have used similar credit-based sales options, some offering interest rates on the credit, others choosing to keep their credit at a flat rate.

Nearly 200 years later, the first types of ‘plastic currency’ started to appear on the market. Companies started to discover that they could provide consumers credit for whatever items they wanted, and the credit card became a common and acceptable form of currency, still dominant after 80 years.

Credit was also soon extended to microloan and pay-advance agencies, such as GreatPlainsLending, which determine the appropriate loan amount for someone who needs cash quickly but doesn’t have enough credit with their card or other credit organizations. As loans, debts and credit are paid back to all types of creditors, the borrower’s credit score increases and develops an individual’s liquidity.

As an economic reality, credit helps develop commerce by letting people pay off expenditures based on their own schedule, rather than that dictated by their actual cash flow. In this way, American business is founded on credit. Without credit, business wouldn’t be where it is today.