Consumer lending in postwar France was dominated by sales credit. These loans were offered not primarily by the retailers themselves, as in the United States, but by independent consumer finance companies that emerged from collaborations between banks and consumer goods manufacturers. The earliest were in the auto sector. Furniture and kitchen-equipment manufacturers quickly followed their lead. By the mid-1950s, a set of general-purpose sales credit companies had emerged that provided the bulk of consumer credit in France for an entire generation. Even large retailers that wanted to offer specialized credit products partnered with the big sales finance companies to provide it. This pattern of lending persisted through the postwar period. It shaped the way French lenders responded to computer and telecommunications technologies, new models of consumer lending, and financial deregulation in the 1980s.

Consumer loans in the early postwar period were expensive to originate and manage. Successful lenders combined interest income with subsidies from retailers or manufacturers whose products they helped finance. Even with this extra source of income, the lenders faced a constant struggle to find profits in a challenging sector with narrow profit margins. Those that succeeded invested heavily in automation and continuously refined their strategies for controlling nonpayments. They also paid careful attention to their public image.