When was layaway invented and by who?

Answer 1

Okay so i work at sears, in my training i was told that sears was the first company to start a lawaway plan to meet the needs of the american people during the great depression, however they also said that sears and kmart started together by two partners, and that sears owns kmart. I have found that to be a lie, when i discovered that kmart actually bought sears in 2005 merging the two. After finding that out along with other irrelevent facts im beginning to doubt that sears was the first, also according to wikipedia lawaway was first created by some guy in new zeiland, and it was called lay-by. thank you for reading my uneducated answer!