MICR

What Is MICR

MICR is an acronym for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition; it refers to the specialized toner used to print the font at the bottom of checks and other negotiable documents. In an easy word, The MICR is a device that can recognize human-readable characters printed on documents such as cheques using special magnetic ink.

How it works

The reader reads these characters by examining their shapes. Characters are printed in a special font. Each character is formed by a 7 x 10 matrix. The MICR has a magnetic head that can detect the magnetic pattern for each character.

Fonts

There are two major MICR fonts in use: E-13B and CMC-7. —the 10 numeric characters along with control characters.

1. E-13B:- The MICR E-13B font is the standard in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries. E-13B has a 14 character set. They are 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,⑆,⑈,⑇,⑉                                                                                               
   
2. CMC-7:- Major European countries, including France and Italy, and others like Brazil and Mexico use the CMC-7 font. CMC-7 has a 15 character set.                                                                                                                                                                                               
   

 Where It Is Used

This is a type of data input often found in banks. The bank account number and other details are printed onto bank cheques (USA - checks) in a special font with magnetic ink.

MICR Reader

MICR characters are printed on documents in either of the MICR fonts. The ink used in the printing is a magnetic ink or toner, usually containing iron oxide. The MICR text is passed before a MICR reader. The ink in the plane of the paper is first magnetized. Then the characters are passed over a MICR reader 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.

Advantage

The use of MICR allows the characters to be read reliably even if they have been overprinted or obscured by other marks, such as cancellation stamps and signature.

More About MICR

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.