| OCR Text |
Show Tunny' numbers on checks help speed their processing printed during processing. The Transit and On-Us fields were printed on your checks by the check printer; the Amount Field is printed by the bank in which the check is deposited. "MICR speeds the complicated check processing work the the nation's banks," according to Mr. Creamer, "crediting and charging accounts as quickly as mail reaches the clearing house." Bank Administration Institute, headquartered in Park Ridge, 111., publishes documents printed in magnetic ink which serve as standards for calibrating the electronic equipment used by local banks and Federal Reserve Banks. BAI also serves as an electronic test lab, helping banks, corporations, and check printers determine what's wrong with their MICR printing when a machine rejects one of their checks. Processing checks is a big job for U.S. banks when you consider that 75 million checks are written here each day! Those boxy little numbers at the bottom of your checks go a long way toward helping the nation's bank process more than 25 billion checks each year. These numbers are the key to the country's MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Recognition) system, according to Patrick R. Creamer, Assistant Cashier, State Bank of Southern Utah, president of the Southern Utah Chapter of Bank Administration Institute. Few people outside the banking industry, however, know just what the numbers mean (although you may recognize one as your checking account number), or just how the whole numerical series at the bottom of a check speeds up and simplifies clearance and handling procedures. The numbers, according to Mr. Creamer, are printed with ink containing iron oxide, which is magnetized and sensed by electronic devices at Federal Reserve Banks and other banks functioning as check clearing houses. MICR coding on a check that has been processed through the banking system typically consists con-sists of three groups of numbers. Left to right on a check, these groups are classified as follows: The Transit Field- - -which identifies the Federal Reserve District and office, payment terms (immediate or deferred); and local bank upon which the check is drawn; The On-Us Field in the middle -- -which containes the account number and possibly the check number; The Amount Field to the right - -where the check amount is |
