Magnetic Ink Character Recognition

Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) number which are printed on cheques in a special magnetic ink which can be read at high speed by the magnetic ink character reader.



most of the data (sort code etc) is pre printed onto the cheque but the amount is unknown until the person writes the cheque

When the cheque is presented for payment , the amount the cheque is for is then printed onto the cheque again in magnetic ink.

Advantages of MICR 
Accuracy:the documents usually cheques are used with 100% accuracy

Difficult to forge: because of the sophisticated magnetic ink technology used 

Can be read easily: cheques are often folded,crumpled up etc methods such as OCR and OMR would not work with these.MICR uses magnetic pattern so this is unaffected by crumpling

speed of reading documents can be read at high speeds and this is particulary important for clearing cheques

Disadavantages of MICR
Expense : The high speed character readers are expensive.