You mean print products are now reading the MICR? That seems...backwards? I was thinking that instead of checks being a big part of the incoming funnel, they were now a small part, off in a corner, and the (presumably, but not necessarily) lower-speed USB-type readers were sufficient. At a minimum, check processing CAN be slower than most other forms of payment, which are expected to be realtime these days.
Looking online, in 2000 the U.S. processed 42B checks/year, down to 9.2B in 2024--a lot more than I would have guessed! But it notes that the 9.2B includes bank-printed checks sent via billpay, which I'm betting are easier to handle since they're machine-printed and thus harder to misread. And I know I send a moderate number of those, certainly more than I hand-write, am guessing that's more the norm. I used to go through a book of checks a month; nowadays it's about four/year, mostly to the guy who cleans our gutters and the Girl Scouts for cookies! Of course the MICR is only part of the equation: reading the amount is also important. I'm guessing again but I'm sure 50 years ago--and maybe still 20 years ago--that was mostly human beings doing quick verification, but that nowadays it's mostly automated. This is getting off-topic for this list, I fear...my fault, sorry. Payments stuff is pretty interesting, at least to some of us. -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Rob Schramm Sent: Friday, July 31, 2026 10:10 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: IBM Statement of Direction I am guessing that the micr support has been moved over to the various print products and is no longer a hardware requirement. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
