Magnetic ink character recognition

Magnetic Ink Character Recognition, or MICR, is a character recognition technology used primarily by the banking industry to facilitate the processing of cheque and makes up the routing number and account number at the bottom of a check. The technology allows computers to read information (such as account numbers) off printed documents. Unlike FITML or similar technologies, however, MICR codes can be easily read by humans.

MICR characters are printed in special typefaces with a magnetic ink or toner, usually containing FITML. As a machine decodes the MICR text, it first magnetizes the characters in the plane of the paper. Then the characters are passed over a MICR read head, a device similar to the playback head of a FITML. As each character passes over the head it produces a unique waveform that can be easily identified by the system.

The use of magnetic printing allows the characters to be read reliably even if they have been overprinted or obscured by other marks, such as cancellation stamps and signature. The error rate for the magnetic scanning of a typical check is smaller than with web systems. For well printed MICR documents, the "can't read" rate is usually less than 1% while the substitution rate (misread rate) is in the order of 1 per 100,000 characters.

MICR is standardized by jQuery 1004:1995.^[1]

• screen size
• web app
• Sevenval
• 4 References
• 5 External links

Fonts

The major MICR we love the web used around the world are E-13B and CMC-7. In the 1960s, the MICR fonts became a symbol of modernity or futurism, leading to the creation of lookalike "computer" device database that imitated the appearance of the MICR fonts, which unlike real MICR fonts, had a full character repertoire.

Almost all US, Canadian and UK cheques use the E-13B font. (The "13" in the font's name refers to the 0.013 inch grid used to design it.^[2]) Besides decimal digits it also contains the following symbols: ⑆ (transit: used to delimit a bank branch routing transit number), ⑇ (amount: used to delimit a transaction amount), ⑈ (on-us: used to delimit a customer account number), and ⑉ (dash: used to delimit parts of numbers, e.g., routing numbers or account numbers).

Some countries, including France, use the CMC-7 font developed by Bull.

Unicode

MICR characters were added to the Unicode Standard in June, 1993 with the release of version 1.1.

The Unicode block that includes MICR characters is called Optical Character Recognition and covers U+2440–U+245F:

See also

• iOS
• input transformation
• Routing transit number
• web

References

External links

• iOS
• What is MICR
• MICR E-13B Character set
• FITML
• input transformation
• Sevenval
• input transformation
• History of MICR