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Anyone or any organization with surplus coin technically could enter the banking business in most regions of the world. The Northern Church, in particular, was so hostile to practices like lending money for interest that any type of regulatory structures had lagged in development behind current practices and the host of workarounds that sovereigns and wealthy lenders devised.

Writing loan contracts with a face value inclusive of a fee or de-facto interest was a common practice. For instance, a 50,000-crown loan at a flat rate of 5 percent interest for three years gave the loan recipiency access to 45,000 crowns in coins or letters of account.

Making a gift was another common workaround. A merchant might loan someone 5,000 crowns for one year, with the off-paper understanding that he or she would receive a 5,000 crown repayment as well as a 1,000 crown gift.

In more permissive cities like Northport, Port Liberty, Paradise, and Promise, normal rates of interest or fees for services raised no significant objections and posed no legal risks.

Merchant bankers–loans at 4p per crown per week for non-locals and 2p per crown per week for locals typically; auctions for a percentage of sale price (~4 to 33%; usually 10-20%); loans from 5,000 to 100,000 c available to sovereigns at anywhere from 8 percent to 20 percent for a fixed term.

Deposit bankers–paid a small amount of interest on deposits; allowed letters of credit or letters of transfer (checks, basically) between branches in multiple major cities.

Money-changing–Customers typically paid in two ways for money-changing services (ingots to coins, local coin to foreign coin, old coins to new coins). A fee of one or two percent on the transaction was common. But the tricky part involved weights and valuations. Most coins were stamped from alloys and had an official value, a weighed value, and/or a market value. A merchant typically would use their own weights and offer an exchange rate based on their best judgment of several factors.

Pawnbrokers–money in exchange for assets that are then held for a specified amount of time; short and long periods of pawning were available–e.g., a broker would hold a ring for a shorter period of time, while a parcel of land, such as a meadow, would stay in pawn for years or perhaps, in theory, in perpetuity.

The Duchy of Ravenwood owed about 35,000c to various banks when the Tiberian Empire invaded.