This chapter discusses the context of the gathering of information, and deals with the various institutional forms of banks, and finally with the instruments of credit and exchange, most of which were typically developed in major maritime ports. Maritime ports functioning as linking nodes on the circuits as well as gateways to extensive hinterlands had to offer financial facilities to fuel activities in transport, commerce and exchange. Finance was of vital importance for trade, since it mediated between savers and investors by moving purchasing power around in time and space in order to direct savings to their highest value use, which in period was usually long-distance trade. On the cusp of the sixteenth century, North European trade was financed predominantly by promissory notes, called bills obligatory if they were informal holographs signed by the debtor and bonds if formally drawn up and sealed.