It was in the late 1950s that factoring came across the Atlantic from the USA to Germany. In fact the first factoring agreement in Germany was signed in 1958. At that time and for the next 20 years, there was no special legal framework for factoring. It was only in 1977/78 that two important German supreme Court rulings resulted in its legal clarification. Consequently recourse factoring was defined as a credit to the seller against the assignment of receivables.