The paper presents banks as the most important institutions in the financial systems of most countries. The central bank of each European Union country supervises commercial banks in the country in which it operates, while the central bank itself is supervised by the umbrella bank of the European Union. When talking about commercial banks, they are part of the daily operations of economic entities in the country where they operate. Accordingly, the purpose of the paper is to present theoretical and practical knowledge in the field of the banking system and credit operations based on professional literature and analysis of secondary data. In the paper, the theoretical part describes the banking system and the key terms for understanding it, along with the main features of credit and lending in the Republic of Croatia. The functions and types of banks are presented and the concepts of loans, types of loans and lending conditions, interest rates and currency clauses are defined. In the practical part of the work, the conditions of housing and cash lending in selected groups of banks in the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Slovenia, Intesa Sanpaolo and Addiko Group were analyzed in the form of informative calculations for a certain amount of credit. Informative calculations are based on data taken from the official websites of the observed banks for May 2023. An analysis of the trend of interest rates on selected loans for the period from 2018 to 2022 was also carried out, and a projection of the trend of interest rates for the period from 2023 to 2027 was given. On the basis of the conducted analyses, it was concluded that the Republic of Croatia is a more favorable option for contracting loans in selected banks compared to the Republic of Slovenia and the entire Euro area.