united-states legal-terms debt loan
What regulations specify the loan and what regulations specify the credit under US law?
<p>What is a difference between loan and credit in the law system? Let's say US law.
What does it mean to grant a loan, use a loan or to have a credit? What regulations describe both credit and loan?</p>

<p>The terms are used in inconsistent and overlapping ways. Their meaning has to be determined from context. Words do not have universal meanings in all contexts in the law.</p>

<p>A loan generally refers to a delivery of something (often money) with a legally binding expectation that it will be returned with some additional compensation to the lender, later on. To "use a loan" would mean actually receiving a loan from someone.</p>

<p>A "grant of a loan" usually means agreeing to make a loan in the near future, rather than actually carrying out the loan at that time.</p>

<p>Credit is a broader term with multiple senses. When a purchase is made "on credit", the sale is accompanied by a loan to  the buyer to assist the buyer in making the purchase.</p>

<p>But, the term a person's "credit" can also refer to an ability to borrow money, rather than to money that has already been loaned.</p>

<p>A third sense of the word "credit" is a technical accounting sense of the word. In double entry accounting, a credit is an event that increases a person's assets or reduces their liabilities (in contrast to a "debit" which does the reverse). A transaction that is a credit to one party in double entry accounting is usually a debit with respect to the other party, or is part of an offsetting debt-credit pair of impacts on the person's books in a single event.</p>
