MICR E-13B is a standard font being used by American Bankers Association for automatic check processing in banking industry since 1995. MICR stands for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition font. MICR E-13B is the font standard based on E-13B symbology. MICR is widely acknowledged standard in USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several other countries. MICR E-13B barcode consists of 9 numeric digits (0-9) and four special characters signifying Amount, Domestic, BSB and Dash.
History and Purpose
MICR font was developed in the early fifties when the banking sector was growing and it was not possible to efficiently and rapidly process bank checks. At that time, MICR worked in the principal of tape recorded. The bottom of the check contained the code which was scanned using headers which in turn transformed it into electronic signal hence the data in the check was decoded. A group of researchers from Stanford University and American Bankers Association started and developed MICR font with the purpose of improving banking transactions and check processing.
Advantages
First of its kind to encode and decode information about bank check and money order processing.
Extremely fast decoding; It is used in banking industry where fast transactions are required.
Simple encoding and decoding algorithm because it only encodes numeric data and four special characters.
Extremely secure, again this is need of the banking sector.
Limitations
Can only encode nine numeric digits and four special characters.
Limited fault tolerance and distorted image cannot be easily restored to its actual image.
Usage
Major user of MICR E-13B is the banking industry. MICR is used to process bank checks and money orders. In fact, many business corporations makes it mandatory that only checks with MICR font standard will be accepted. Countries which are widely using MICR E-13B in the banking industry are United States, Canada, Japan, Australia etc.