Bearing this view of bank credit in mind, it becomes necessary to refine upon some of the commonly accepted ideas of the nature of bank credit and particularly of its relation to money. It is seen at once that the "credit" furnished by banks is an independent medium of exchange, and that while the bank has an important and significant duty to perform in converting claims upon it into money when demanded, this is only an incident of its general work. The money-furnishing or money-transferring business of a bank is not its most important side, and as the bank increases in the scope of its operation the proportion of its transactions which consists in the furnishing of money tends to decrease. When reserve banking is introduced the relation of the bank to money becomes still more remote. The bank then no longer keeps reserves in money for the purpose of paying its customers, but it transfers this function to the central bank and devotes itself primarily to the duty of passing upon applications from its clientele. These applications, although stated in terms of dollars, and although they appear as requests for loans, are really requests that the bank should credit on its books a percentage of the assets which "borrowers" can command, in order that the latter may readily use these values in buying and selling and in production. This gives the bank a status as an active element in business, which it does not possess as long as it is thought of merely as a kind of pawnbroker or, at best, as the highest type of money lender.