CMC-7 Font

This font is used for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) and is primarily used for cheque processing in the banking industry. Since special ink is used to print the MICR characters, they can be recognized by a MICR reader with high reliability, even if the characters are written over or obscured in any way. This font is also easily readable by humans.

The following countries are examples of where the MICR CMC-7 font is used:

  • Spain

  • Mexico

  • France

This font is specifically supported by the RecoStar recognition engine.


An image that shows an example of the CMC-7 MICR font.

Besides the characters 0 through 9, the font contains five special symbols. These control characters after the numerals are (shown in the image from left to right ):

  • internal - identifies the beginning of a piece of internal information for a bank, such as an account number. RecoStar returns this symbol as a hex(3A) = ":" delimiter.

  • terminator - terminates the bank routing information. This symbol is displayed a second time as the terminator of the check number field (following a minimum of four digits, maximum of seven digits). RecoStar returns this symbol as a hex(3B) = ";" delimiter.

  • amount - identifies the start of the amount field. RecoStar returns this symbol as a hex(3C) = "<" delimiter.

  • routing - delimits a bank branch routing transit number. RecoStar returns this symbol as a hex(3E) = ">" delimiter.

  • not used character - does not serve any role in the structure of the MICR line. RecoStar returns this symbol as a hex(3D) = "=" delimiter.

Important This option can only be used if the Engine is set to RecoStar. It does not work for Voting or AEG Recognition.