Sure, there are a lot of possibilities that fullfill the three critera - you're imposing the modern conception of credit on early human civilizations.

To put it simply, early credit relationships were dominantly exchanges of services. So it wasn't barter, it's that you would do something for someone with the expectation that they would do something for you.

There, no media of exchange, and no barter. Solved. That's what you get for projecting definitions backwards through time :)

Now for the first time, I'm not sure how that is controversial, if you read that historically debt was a tool of bondage, then it makes perfect sense to frame the power of bondage as a social ill.