EN
Because the Cooperative Savings and Credit Unions (SKOK) has grown so rapidly over the past decade, it now boasts a network of branches that is denser than the country’s largest national retail bank PKO BP SA. The wording of the act on SKOK enables it to carry out a range of operations that are normally the sole provenance of banks, while in the existing legal order credit unions are not subject to bank regulations or financial supervision. The aim of the article is to present the history of the development and evolution of the legal framework of SKOK in the light of global trends and to show the fundamental consequences of implementing the directive on payment services for the future place of this institution in the architecture of the Polish financial system.