Definition
In mercantile law, usance is the period of time — fixed by commercial custom or trade usage between two countries — allowed for the payment of a foreign bill of exchange. Usance is not a fixed universal interval; it varies by the particular trade route and the countries involved, running in some pairs of countries at one month, in others two or three months, and in others as little as half a month. A bill drawn "at usance" matures at the end of whatever period the relevant custom prescribes. Multiples were recognized: "double usance" extended the standard interval by a factor of two; "treble usance" by three; and "half usance" compressed it accordingly.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The length of time permitted for the payment of a bill of exchange; also, more generally, use, customary usage, or interest paid on borrowed money.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Use; usage; employment (obsolete). Custom or practice (obsolete). Interest paid for money; usury (obsolete). The time fixed by usage between countries for payment of a bill of exchange.
The legal meaning is narrower than even the historical common usage suggests. By the time usance appears in nineteenth-century mercantile law dictionaries, the word had shed its older senses of "use," "custom," and "interest/usury" and referred specifically to a customary payment period governing foreign bills of exchange. A researcher encountering the word in non-legal historical texts — particularly literary or early modern sources — may find it used in those broader, now-obsolete senses, none of which correspond to its technical commercial law meaning.
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Common Confusion
Usance is easily conflated with usury. Both words share a Latin root and in early English usage the two concepts overlapped — Webster's 1913 records "usance" as an obsolete synonym for "usury," and Shakespeare used it that way. In mercantile law, however, the terms are entirely distinct: usury concerns excessive or unlawful interest on a loan; usance concerns the customary maturity period on a bill of exchange. The confusion is most likely to arise in pre-nineteenth-century sources and in documents from civil law jurisdictions influenced by French commercial terminology.
Usance should also be distinguished from days of grace. Days of grace are additional days appended by law or custom after a bill's stated maturity before dishonor can be declared. Usance defines when the bill is due in the first place; days of grace operate after that point has been reached.
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Why It Matters in Research
Usance is a term belonging almost entirely to the era of mercantile bills of exchange and the law merchant. Modern sources rarely use it; researchers are most likely to encounter it in nineteenth-century treatises on negotiable instruments, historical commercial litigation records, and older editions of bills-of-exchange law. Several traps deserve attention.
First, the period covered by usance was not uniform and was never codified universally — it was a matter of local mercantile custom for each pair of trading countries. A bill "at usance" drawn on London from Amsterdam meant something different from a bill at usance drawn on Hamburg from Cadiz. Historical sources may state the period applicable to a particular trade route without flagging that the same term means something different elsewhere. Researchers should identify the specific trading relationship before assuming any fixed interval.
Second, the multiplication conventions (half usance, double usance, treble usance) appear in Bouvier but are not always elaborated in Black's. When a historical instrument or case uses these phrases, Bouvier and Story's Treatise on the Law of Bills of Exchange are the more useful starting points than later editions of Black's.
Third, the word largely disappears from American legal usage after the widespread adoption of the Negotiable Instruments Law (NIL) at the end of the nineteenth century and its successor, Article 3 of the Uniform Commercial Code, neither of which uses or defines usance. A researcher working with instruments from before that standardization period should be alert to usance as a meaningful determinant of maturity that has no direct modern statutory analog.
Fourth, usance retains more vitality in international trade finance contexts and in some civil law jurisdictions, particularly in European and Latin American sources following the French commercial law tradition. Pothier's treatment of usance (Contrat de Change) is the civilian source most frequently cited by Anglo-American dictionaries and should be consulted for that tradition.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The four historical dictionaries surveyed are in close agreement on substance. Black's (both editions) and Burrill define usance as the common period fixed by usage or custom between the country of drawing and the country of payment for bills of exchange, citing Story's Bills of Exchange. Bouvier tracks the same definition but adds more practical texture: he specifies that usance could run one, two, or three months depending on the route, and he articulates the double, treble, and half-usance conventions explicitly. All sources treat usance as a matter of trade custom rather than enacted law.
The historical dictionaries share one notable gap: none addresses how a drawer or payee was supposed to ascertain the applicable usance period in the absence of a codified rule, nor do they address what happens when the parties are from different legal traditions with conflicting customs. Story's treatise (the cited authority in both editions of Black's) addresses this more fully, making it the natural next resource after the dictionary entries.
The consistency across sources suggests that usance was well-settled as a concept even if the underlying period varied. The uniformity of citation to Story reflects his authority as essentially the primary American treatise writer on bills of exchange in the period these dictionaries were compiled.
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Jurisdictional Note
Usance as a technical term is most relevant to English, American, and civil-law commercial sources from roughly the seventeenth through the late nineteenth centuries. It does not appear as a defined term in the UCC or its predecessor uniform acts. In international trade finance and in some civil law jurisdictions, the term continues to appear, and its meaning in those contexts — while still anchored to a customary payment period — may be shaped by the applicable national commercial code rather than pure trade usage.
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