- 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 cheques 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 barcodes 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 iron oxide. 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 tape recorder. 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 optical character recognition 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 ISO 1004:1995.[1]
Contents
Fonts
The major MICR fonts 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" typefaces that imitated the appearance of the MICR fonts, which unlike real MICR fonts, had a full character repertoire.
Almost all Indian, 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:
Optical Character Recognition[1]
Unicode.org chart (PDF)0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F U+244x ⑀ ⑁ ⑂ ⑃ ⑄ ⑅ ⑆ ⑇ ⑈ ⑉ ⑊ U+245x Notes - 1.^ As of Unicode version 6.0
See also
References
- ^ "Information processing -- Magnetic ink character recognition -- Print specifications". International Organization for Standardization. 1995. http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=5457. Retrieved September 28, 2009.
- ^ "The History of the Check and Standardization Efforts"
External links
- What is MICR
- MICR E-13B Character set
- History of MICR and the Check
- GNU General Public Licensed MICR font
- X9 Standards overview document of all MICR-related standards and how they are organized
- The early days of Desktop Laser MICR Check Printing
- History of MICR
- MICR Toner
Magnetic storage media Wire (1898) • Tape (1928) • Drum (1932) • Ferrite core (1949) • Hard disk (1956) • Stripe card (1956) • MICR (1956) • Thin film (1962) • CRAM (1962) • Twistor (~1968) • Floppy disk (1969) • Bubble (~1970) • MRAM (1995) • Racetrack (2008)
ISO standards Lists: List of ISO standards · List of ISO romanizations · List of IEC standards
Categories: Category:ISO standards · Category:OSI protocols1
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- Optical character recognition
- Banking technology
- Typography
- Banking terms and equipment
- ISO standards
- 1.^ As of Unicode version 6.0
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