I'm wondering, since I'm a person planning to get involved in credit unions in the future, do they exist in Switzerland, or is there any equivalent, like any form of non-profit banking systems? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_union in case you don't know what they are.

Yes, they are called Raiffeisenbanken.

http://www.raiffeisen.ch

(the American credit unions are actually modeled after the German / Austrian / Swiss Raiffeisen model AFAIK)

Oh, wow I didn't know that. Thanks.

Raiffeisen Bank - this might help: http://www.raiffeisen.ru/en/about/bankgroup/

Well, thanks for the links. WIR is a non profit bank too right? Is it one of these Raiffeisen banks?

The WIR bank http://www.wir.ch/index.cfm?BFE9B566...940001020761E5 is a Genossenschaft (Cooperative), same legal structure as a Raiffeisenbank.

Link to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative

Oh well thanks for helping me out on this. I'm very much into credit unions and generally cooperative stuff, glad to know they're in Switzerland too.

You will be happy to know that the 2 biggest retailers in Swissieland (AKA the evil duopoly) Migros and Coop are both organized as Genossenschaften. It doesn't make their prices any more palatable tho' ...

Well I'm interested in cooperatives and credit unions, and a lot of other related stuff due to the level of democracy for members and workers, though I hate to hear those ones you listed don't have good prices. I've heard Norway has cooperative stores too, glad to hear they're also in Switzerland.

This might be interesting for you:

Alternative Bank Schweiz

Info in english.

That definitely sounds up my ally. Thanks for all these links.

Thanks, I knew that the Raiffeisens were cooperatives, but never thought of the credit unions.

This led me to the very interesting article in Wikipedia: credit union.

Credit unions more or less have a cooperative feel to them, I'm sure some more than others.