The first credit unions were founded in Germany in the 1840s to provide savings and borrowing opportunities to working-class people. The guiding principles were simple:

Only people who were credit union members could borrow there.

Loans should be for prudent and productive purposes.

A person's desire to repay (character) would be considered as important as a person's ability to repay (income).

These principles still govern most of the credit unions in the world today.

In Georgia, the credit union movement started when Edward A. Filene, a Boston merchant, visited Atlanta in 1922 and persuasively explained the need for credit unions. Later that year, Atlanta attorney E. Marvin Underwood drafted a state credit union bill. The bill was introduced in the Georgia General Assembly that year and each following year until it was passed in 1925.

Georgia currently has 179 credit unions serving more than 1.74 million members. Combined, these credit unions have more than $12.6 billion in assets.