Magnetic ink character recognition (MICR), which was developed in the mid-1950s, is widely used in the banking industry for marking bank checks. Routing and account information, including bank number and check number, are printed in stylized human-readable characters with ink that has magnetic properties. The characters can be read by specialized magnetic readers even if they are overprinted by cancellation marks or smudges. This equipment, which must make contact with the characters in order to read them, requires precise registration and orientation.

Applications
MICR readers are not only used in financial institutions but also in retail point-of-sale stations for use in check authorization.

Acknowledgement: Some of the information on AIDC pages is based on the information in AIMGlobal's website. We would like to thank AIMGlobal for this.