You will prepare and submit a term paper on Traditional and Non-traditional Activities of Commercial Banks. Your paper should be a minimum of 1500 words in length. In order to know the history of commercial banks, various countries would be taken into consideration. In the United States, the origin of commercial banks date backs to 1781. Early commercial banks in the US were nonprofit making organizations. At the time of colonial America though there were many banks but only a few of them were commercial banks. The first a commercial bank in the US was established by Morris, Willing, and other prominent Philadelphia based merchants in 1871 and was called Bank of North America. In Australia, distressed by the monetary policies of the colonial rule, Governor Macquarie gave a charter to some of its citizens to form Australia’s first bank which was the Bank of South Wales in the year of 1817. In India, although the banking system dates back to ancient times where banking was practiced by the Vaishya, the first commercial bank was established in the year 1786, which was the General Bank of India. After that more banks were set up like Bank of Hindustan and Bengal Bank. Since then, there has been a revolution in the banking system in India. In China, previously the banking functions were conducted by various financial institutions which dealt with the acceptance of deposits, money exchange, making of loans, etc. The early Chinese banks were called Piaohao and Qianzhuang which first came into existence from the Xicheng Dye Company. Soon in middle of the nineteenth century, foreign banks entered into the Chinese market. The first foreign bank in China was British Oriental bank.