This first chapter explores the legacy of colonial credit as antecedent of nineteenth-century finance. The traditional credit systems were the lifeblood of circulation and property during the 300 years of Spanish and Portuguese rule in the New World. They were highly segmented in both colonial Spanish America and Brazil, and are comparable to those of early modern Catholic Europe, preceding the modern integration of credit and monetary markets. The increasing use of bills of exchange during the colonial era reflected the development of interregional systems of mercantile credit. Also of great interest was the creation of mining banks in Peru and Mexico in the eighteenth century. At the same time, the credit transactions supplied by hundreds of ecclesiastical institutions were of great importance for urban real estate proprietors and rural landowners throughout both Portuguese Brazil and Spanish America. In sum, the principal objective of our first chapter is to identify key aspects of the role of credit and finance in the performance of the colonial economies of Spanish America and Brazil, and to suggest how loans and debts wove complex networks of relationships between many economic and social actors before the outbreak of the wars of independence.