CMC-7 Font

This font is used for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) and is primarily used for check 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 some examples of where the MICR CMC-7 font is used:

  • Spain

  • Mexico

  • France


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

Besides the characters 0 through 9, the font contains five special symbols that act as control characters. These are as follows:

  • internal - identifies the beginning of a piece of internal information for a bank, such as an account number.

  • 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).

  • amount - identifies the start of the amount field.

  • routing - delimits a bank branch routing transit number.

  • not used character - does not serve any role in the structure of the MICR line.