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Can I Print Checks with the MICR Font?

This comes up all the time: standard ordinary laser toner is magnetic and will be read by the banks. The gotcha is that standard laser toner rubs off in the *very* high-speed sorting equipment that are used, and this makes read rates drop low and the banks will hate you.

I researched check printers for a customer, and was surprised to find this. The Troy(tm) printers he bought are basically stock Ricoh engines that have slightly tighter paper handling (for registration), plus they add a proprietary Teflon-type powder coating on the output path to coat the checks.

I saw some examples of checks printed with and without this special coating after running through something like 40 passes through check processing equipment, and the one without the coating was a mess. These require special handling that the banks do *not* like. Apparently, they go after companies that issue these kinds of checks with special processing fees.


Excerpted from The comp.fonts FAQ, Copyright © 1992-96 by Norman Walsh