Banks and financial institutions

When the print run has to clear the same night

A bank is the one buyer that sits on both sides of the MICR line. It prints items that have to clear, and it receives items that have to be read, returned, and replaced. Both jobs run on a clock that does not move.

Official checks, cashier checks, money orders, and the return item work that follows them all share the same failure mode. An item a reader/sorter cannot read stops being a print job and becomes a person opening an envelope by hand. We supply the printer, the software, and the toner as one path so that the reject rate is one vendor's responsibility rather than three.

Talk through your operation See what it takes
A Pro C7500PM five-color production MICR system in a bank operations center
What the job demands

Four things that decide whether this works

A nightly cycle with no slack

Output is produced against a cutoff. A machine that stops for a supply change in the middle of the run costs more than the supply does.

Items that a reader/sorter accepts

A reject is charged back at the bank's own fee schedule and handled by hand. The reject rate is a line item, not a quality score.

Return items that must be replaced

A returned item needs a legally equivalent Image Replacement Document, printed with its own MICR line so it can be presented again.

Output that satisfies the standard

ASC X9 and ABA specifications govern the MICR line. Our MICR fonts are a condition of the performance guarantee.

Banks: both sides of the MICR line

Outbound

Items the bank issues

  • Compose in CheckStream, onto blank safety stock
  • Print on production MICR, to 1,000,000 a month
  • Clears when the reader/sorter reads the MICR line

Inbound

Items returned to the bank

  • Receive X9.37, X9.100-180 and X9.100-187
  • Decide in OnSight Decision, three dispositions
  • Reprint as an IRD on blank stock, with its own MICR line

Both halves run on the same toner

ProMark MICR, at a 0.1 percent reject rate or lower.

What it takes

Printer, software, supplies

Each model below is sized to this buyer's monthly volume, with room for the peak month.

Print

Production MICR printers

The Pro 8410M/8420M and Pro 8310M/8320M run to 1,000,000 impressions a month at 111 or 136 pages per minute. Where output needs color, the Pro C7500PM and Pro C7210XM carry up to 240,000 pages a month.

Compose

CheckStream and OnSight

CheckStream composes the whole item onto blank safety stock in one pass, so no account has its own pre-printed inventory. OnSight takes an X9 cash letter and produces printed Image Replacement Documents.

Supply

ProMark MICR toner and approved supplies

ProMark MICR toner tests at a 0.1% reject rate or lower. Typical MICR toner in this industry rejects at 2% to 4%. Approved supplies and continuous maintenance are two of the five conditions the guarantee attaches to.

The MICR Performance Guarantee

We cover bank fees for rejected checks over the bank's acceptable rate, where our materials caused the reject.

Five conditions apply together: a Rosetta Technologies branded printer, purchase from an authorized source, approved supplies, our MICR fonts, and continuous maintenance under an approved service plan. Mixing standard and MICR toner cartridges or photoconductor drum units is an explicit exclusion.

Request the written terms Guarantee terms
A bank back-office processing area with rows of workstations, sorted document trays on rolling carts, and a production printer against the far wall

Back-office check operations run to a daily deadline, which is why throughput and reject rate matter more here than price per page.

Questions this buyer asks

Straight answers

What monthly volume do the production printers support?

The Pro 8410M/8420M and Pro 8310M/8320M run to a maximum of 1,000,000 impressions a month. The Pro C7500PM and Pro C7210XM carry a recommended volume of up to 240,000 pages a month. Duty cycles run higher than recommended volumes and are not the number to plan a nightly cycle against.

Does a bank still need pre-printed check stock?

No. CheckStream prints the background, the logo, the security features, and the MICR line in the same pass onto blank safety stock. One stock covers every account, which removes the per-account inventory and the obsolescence that comes with it.

What happens to items that are returned?

OnSight reads an X9.37, X9.100-180, or X9.100-187 cash letter file and produces X9.100-140 compliant Image Replacement Documents. OnSight Decision applies set criteria to route items automatically rather than by hand.

What does the MICR Performance Guarantee actually cover?

It covers bank fees for rejected checks over the bank's acceptable rate, where our materials caused the reject. Five conditions apply together: a Rosetta Technologies branded printer, purchase from an authorized source, approved supplies, our MICR fonts, and continuous maintenance under an approved service plan.

Other operations

A different job needs a different answer

Payroll and insurance claims

Payroll and Insurance Claims

Payroll and claims work is defined by its deadline. The run is large, it happens on a date everyone already knows, and every rejected item is a person who did not get paid on the day they expected to be.

See the fit
Healthcare payers and providers

Healthcare Payers and Providers

A healthcare payment is rarely just a check. It arrives with remittance detail the provider has to reconcile against claims, and the two have to stay together from the printer to the envelope.

See the fit
Government and education

Government and Education

A city finance office, a school district and a university bursar are running the same job: scheduled disbursements that cannot be late, paid to people who are not set up for electronic payment, under a purchasing policy that has to be satisfied before anything is bought.

See the fit
Small and mid-size business

Small and Mid-Size Business

Below a certain volume the question is not throughput. It is whether a finance team should be storing, securing, counting, and destroying pre-printed check stock for every account it holds.

See the fit
Service bureaus and commercial printers

Service Bureaus and Commercial Printers

A commercial printer or mailing house is not printing its own checks. It is printing other organizations' checks, which changes the problem: many accounts, many templates, other people's deadlines, and a reject that is your fault and their money.

See the fit
Check return and IRD teams

Check Return and IRD Teams

A return item arrives as a record in a cash letter file. It leaves as a physical document that carries its own MICR line, or it does not leave at all and somebody works it by hand.

See the fit
Get in touch

What is your bank’s acceptable rate, and where are you against it?

If you know the number, we can work out what a reject costs you a year. If you do not, that is the first thing to ask them.

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