As an Optical Character Reader (OCR) is not perfect at converting standard printed text into electronic form, there is a more reliable system available. It is called the magnetic ink character reader.

The problem:
A standard OCR device relies on high contrast between the paper and the ink itself. This is often not the case! Paper can be grubby or crinkled, or the ink may be smudged. Also the huge number of fonts that people like to use makes it a very tricky task to read text with 100% accuracy.

The solution:

• Text is printed with a special magnetic ink so the reader no longer relies on simple contrast.
• Text is also printed in a special font that makes it much easier for the machine to tell characters apart.

Banks make extensive use of this technology. The combination of magnetic ink and special font allows thousands of bank cheques to be scanned per hour.

Advantage:

• Very reliable, low errors
• High speed
• Not so sensitive to grubby paper.

Disadvantage:

• The ink technology is relatively expensive
• The font has to be specific.