Importance of MICR, the Blog

The important basics of using MICR are this. Have you ever looked closely at a check or financial document? Well, you may have noticed that there is a thin line of numbers printed on the bottom of the check. We call this line is a MICR strip, pronounced ‘my - ker.’ MICR is short for
Magnetic Ink Character Recognition
. The MICR strip that shown down of the bottom of that check is printed with a special MICR toner and it contains the information about the person or company who owns the check. Usually the account and routing numbers.

The MICR line on checks is printed using a special toner because it contains an innovative magnetic ink that is read by a reader-sorter machine. Just imagine this for a minute - consider the amount of people and businesses alike who write checks over the course of an entire day. Banks and financial institutions must process these checks at a very high volume and believe me there are TONS of check that go to be cashed every single day. With that being said, the processing of those checks MUST be automated in order for banks to complete the everyday transactions smoothly and quickly. The incredible creation of the magnetic ink character recognition toner has permitted banks and financial institutions to use reader sorter machines which distinguish the printed codes on checks, providing for fast automated processing.

MICR toner was originally created to help in the automation of check processing, however; throughout the years, it has the added the benefit of superior security. Furthermore, for this reason alone- the use of MICR toner has been implemented by other industries outside of banking. Magnetic ink character recognition can be found on many documents including airline tickets, coupons, and receipts for insurance premiums.