Magnetic ink character recognition (MICR)
Magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) is a character-recognition technology used mainly by the banking industry to ease the processing and clearance of cheques and other documents. The MICR encoding, called the MICR line, is at the bottom of cheques and other vouchers and typically includes the:
The technology allows MICR readers to scan and read the information directly into a data-collection device. Unlike barcodes and similar technologies, MICR characters can be read easily by humans |
sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recognition