Abstract This chapter recalls the economic rationale of central bank lending to private borrowers (Section 4.1) and argues that the recent literature has often underestimated the importance of such lending by early central banks, without this implying that central banks were really competing with ‘commercial’ banks (Section 4.2). Finally, it illustrates pre-eighteenth-century awareness of the subject by reviewing the literature of the time (Section 4.3). Lending of central banks to private borrowers had a number of advantages relevant as of the first centuries of central banking: (1) providing an option for granular asset diversification and expansion, allowing thereby also to increase the monetary base; (2) generating income with limited risks; (3) improving the availability and pricing of loans for private debtors; (4) anchorizing the central bank in society. Lending to private borrowers took in particular the form of Lombard and discount operations.