The MICR Performance Guarantee applies when all five are true
A Rosetta Technologies branded printer
Purchased in the United States or Canada.
Bought from an authorized source
Rosetta Technologies or an authorized reseller.
Approved supplies
Toner, developer, cartridges, maintenance kits and PCDUs.
Rosetta Technologies MICR fonts
E-13B and CMC-7 as supplied.
Continuous maintenance
An approved service plan or an approved provider.
All five, together
Miss one and the guarantee does not apply. Mixing standard and MICR parts is explicitly excluded.
What it pays: bank fees for rejected checks above the acceptable rate your bank sets, where Rosetta Technologies materials caused the rejection.
A feature list tells you what a vendor chose to print. These ten questions tell you what they actually know about the machine they are selling.
We are a vendor, so treat this with appropriate suspicion. We have tried to write questions that are genuinely neutral, meaning that a competitor who does the work properly answers them as easily as we do. If any question here only has a good answer from one company, it is a bad question and we would rather hear about it.
Ask them in a conversation rather than in a document. The hesitations are informative.
The ten
- What makes this printer MICR capable? There are three requirements and all three are necessary: magnetic toner, calibration verified on a MICR verifier, and certified E-13B or CMC-7 fonts tuned to that engine and toner. A vendor who names only the toner is selling cartridges and calling it a MICR solution.
- Is the toner formulated for this specific engine? Signal strength is a property of the assembled machine, not of the toner alone. The engine, the fuser temperature, the transfer roller, and the toner all contribute. A universal toner across a wide range of machines is a compromise, and the vendor should be willing to say so rather than deny the tradeoff exists.
- What reject rate has this combination been tested at, and on what equipment? The answer should name a reader/sorter, not just quote a number. An IBM 3890 high-speed reader/sorter is the kind of equipment a serious test runs on. For reference, typical MICR toner in this industry rejects at 2% to 4%.
- Who performed that testing? Independent testing and internal testing are both legitimate, and they are not the same claim. Ask which one this is and accept a straight answer either way.
- What are the fonts certified against, and by whom? Certified E-13B or CMC-7 fonts are tuned to an engine and toner combination. Certification that is not tied to a specific engine and toner is a description of a font file, not a guarantee about the output.
- What is in the maintenance kit, and what is its published yield? A kit typically replaces the fuser, photoconductor drum, transfer roller, pickup rollers, and separation pads, though contents vary per printer. Yields should be given as page counts, not time intervals. A vendor who answers in months either does not know or is managing your expectations.
- What check stock do you require, and against what standard? The answer is ANSI X9.18, which governs check stock and is approved by the American Bankers Association. Its requirements include 24 lb weight recommended, Sheffield smoothness of 120 to 150, moisture content of 4.5%, sealed moisture-proof wrapping, and no ferromagnetic material in the paper. A vendor who has no opinion about your paper has not thought about your reject rate.
- Does the vendor participate in the standards process? ASC X9 is the accredited standards committee for financial services. Committee participation is not a product feature and it is a reasonable proxy for whether a supplier is engaged with the standards or simply following them. We are a standing member of the ASC X9B Committee on Paper Payment Systems, and other serious suppliers are in that room too.
- What exactly does your guarantee cover, and what are the conditions? Read the conditions before the headline. A guarantee tied to using the vendor's printer, supplies, fonts, and maintenance is a normal arrangement, because those are the variables the vendor can control. What matters is that the conditions are stated plainly rather than discovered during a claim, and that the guarantee is not presented as a promise of zero rejects.
- What does support look like on the day of a failed payroll run? Ask for hours, channel, and what happens when the problem is not resolved on the first call. Our own support is 5 x 12 and toll-free at (800) 937-4224. Whatever a vendor offers, get it stated before you need it.
What the answers tell you
Group the responses into three categories as you go.
| Response pattern | What it usually indicates |
|---|---|
| Specific, immediate, offers documentation without being pushed | The vendor does this work themselves and has the material to hand |
| Correct in substance but has to check the details | Reasonable, particularly on kit contents and yields, which vary per printer |
| Redirects to a feature list or to price | The question has not been asked of them before, which is itself the answer |
The pattern to watch for is a vendor who answers the commercial questions crisply and the technical ones vaguely. Pricing and lead times are easy to know. Signal strength in a specific engine requires somebody to have measured it.
Two questions to ask yourself instead
Two numbers in this decision do not come from any vendor, and it is worth having them before the first conversation.
- Your bank's published acceptable reject rate, in writing, current for your accounts.
- The fee schedule that applies to items above that rate.
An item a reader/sorter cannot read leaves straight-through processing and is handled by a person at the bank, which the bank charges for at its own fee schedule. Those two figures convert every vendor claim about reject rates from an abstraction into a number in your currency. Without them, you are comparing percentages with no idea what a percentage costs you.
Our own answer to question four
It would be evasive to publish this list and not answer it. ProMark™ MICR toner is independently tested at a 0.1% reject rate or lower, on an IBM 3890 high-speed reader/sorter. The equipment and the independence are the part of that sentence that matters, and they are what to require from anyone else you ask.
The 2% to 4% range describes typical MICR toner in this industry. Bank thresholds and fees vary by institution.