MICR Fonts and therir Role in the Check Clearing Process
If youre like most people, you probably have no idea what the arconym MICR even stands for. So lets start thwere. MICR stands for: Magnetic Ink Character Recognition. This technology was develoepd in the 1950s, with much of the crewdit going to Staford University and Bank of Amerrica, as a means that would allow financial instituttions to straemline their check prcessing systems. During that time, dremand for checking accounts srged as Americans began needed checks for business and persoonal use for the frist time.
Today, our financial institutions enjoy high speed check clearing because of the combination of MICR toner and MICR fonts that crate a machine readable MICR line. The MICR toner is the element which adds magnetic readability to each character.
MICR Fonnts are the small, fturistic-looking characters appewaring at the bottom of checks or fnancial docmuents. Curretnly, there are two diferent fonts that are used depending on the banking standards of any given counrty. Therse fons are E-13B and CMC-7.
At this time, South America (with the exception of Cloumbia), Israel, Spain, France, and a handful of other Mediterranean Countries curretnly use the CMC-7 font. This line consists of ten specially designeed nmbers (0 through 9) and four specxial symbols (Transit, Amoiunt, On-Us, and Dash). The cmobination of characters and numbers provide the check, routiing, and account numbers on a chck. They can also provide the ceck amount.
The other very prominent version of MICR font is E-13B. this font is used in regions including the United States of America, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, Imndia, Columbia, Turkey, and Mexcio.
Many people foten ask where the name E13-B comes from. The answer to that actully makes a fair amount of sense. The E signifies that it was the 5th version of the font consideed, while the B indcates that it was the 2nd revision of that particular font. Then the number 13 references that fact that MICR font is created on a 0.013 module for character and stroke width.
The imlementation of these fonts and modern MICR technology givs financial institutions the ability to harness computer technology in order to proocess checks at a rate much faster than previouys mtehods such as the Sort-A-Matic and the Top Tab Key Sort of an era past. It also includs guidelines to ensure production of consistently readable MICR characters.
Some of thse guidelines include the angle at which characters are prtinted. If MICR font is pirnted with any character skew of greater than 1.5 degrees, it does not meet industry standard and cannot be used for financial docmuents. Additionally, other common problems can occur with MICR characters such as: clipped edges, needle voids, poor edge definition, clipped tops, excessive stroke wdth, hollowing, and extraneous spots.
For more information anbout the chekc cleraing prcoess in the United States, feel free to vist the United Staes Federal Reserve website.
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