The Ottoman Bank, known from 1863 to 1925 as the Imperial Ottoman Bank and correspondingly referred to by its French acronym BIO, was a bank that played a major role in the financial history of the Ottoman Empire. By the early 20th century, it was the dominant bank in the Ottoman Empire, and one of the largest in the world.

The Ottoman Armenian population mostly belonged to either the Armenian Apostolic Church or the Armenian Catholic Church. They were part of the Armenian millet until the Tanzimat reforms in the nineteenth century equalized all Ottoman citizens before the law. Armenians were a minority in the Empire. They played what would later be seen as a crucial role in Ottoman industry and commerce, and Armenian communities existed in almost every major city of the empire. Despite this, Armenians were heavily persecuted by the Ottoman authorities especially from the latter half of the 19th century, culminating in the Armenian Genocide.