IRD Printing Solutions

All My Papers can help you answer the tough questions that relate to IRD Printing, including:

• How do you print a valid Image Replacement Document (IRD)?

The new Check 21 Act places the liability for an invalid IRD with the financial institution that prints the IRD. All My Papers software is used in some of the nation’s largest banks to print thousands of IRDs on a daily basis, and is production proven.

“CONIX Systems, Inc. is a leader in the development of item processing solutions. For years, large financial institutions have relied on CONIX-powered solutions to process an estimated 100 billion paper and electronic items each year. We chose IRD printing technology from All My Papers. We expected that IRD printing would evolve over the next two to three years to be a significantly different process from its initial concept.  We were looking for a technology partner that had state-of-the-art IRD technology and who could quickly adapt to customer needs.  All My Papers was a perfect fit for us.”
--Frank Stokes, President of Technology, CONIX Systems

The founder and president of All My Papers is on the voting committee of the X9 Standards Group. We understand IRDs and X9.37 files thoroughly. The IRDs you print with All My Papers software conform to and are compliant with the X9.100-140 standard.

The All My Papers IRD Printing technology supports specialty IRD printers from companies like TROY and Source Technologies. Alternatively, you can print valid IRDs with a variety of duplex laser printers from companies like Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark, and Ricoh/Hitachi.

Here are some excerpts from the white paper on IRD Printing, so you can learn how to minimize your liability.

An IRD is the legal equivalent of the original check if it meets the following requirements:

• Must accurately represent all information on the front and back of the original check
• Must contain the legend, “This is a legal copy of your check. You can use it the same way you would use the original check.”
• Must conform to industry standards applicable to the MICR line
• Must conform to industry standards for the physical characteristics of checks (size, paper, etc.)

Here are examples of a Forward Original IRD from the DTSU X9.90-2004, Rev. A Standard. The examples provided contain check designs and security features that are for illustrative purposes only and are not part of this standard. In addition, examples of check images are shown in grayscale for illustration purposes only. According to the standard, check images may be captured and displayed in grayscale or black and white, but the Federal Reserve Bank is requiring all IRDs to be in binary, black and white.

Figure 1: Forward Original IRD of Personal-Sized Check, Front

Challenges In Printing IRDs

Figure 2 - On-Us Field

On-Us Field

The On-Us field within the MICR line is optional and can contain the customer account and check serial number. This field can be up 19 characters long, and the bank on which the check is drawn (the "On-Us" bank) is free to encode the customer's account number and the check serial number in a variety of ways. Some banks place the serial number first and the account number second, while others do just the opposite. There may be "dashes" and spaces as well. This field is flexible because only the "On-Us" bank needs to process the item based on this information.

One challenge of the On-Us section of the MICR line is dashes. Many banks print dashes within the MICR line of the check. But, the banks’ databases do not include the dashes, because this information is not needed for the inter-bank processing of checks. The issue arises when you start printing IRDs. The MICR line on the checks will include dashes, but the bank’s database will not have the dash information, and when the 9.37 file or IRD is constructed, it is constructed with the information from the bank’s database, i.e., no dashes. Therefore, the IRD will not match the MICR line of the check image. This would create an invalid IRD, since the Check 21 Act states that the substitute check, “Must accurately represent all information on the front and back of the original check.”

Therefore, before an IRD is printed, it is recommended that an OCR process is performed on the check image to verify that the MICR line on the check matches the information in the corresponding 9.37 file or database file used to compose the IRD.

See the MICR Verify option in All My Papers IrdLIB PRINTING SDK.

• Printer Issues
• Printer Calibration
• Printer Control
• Page Composition
• Image Issues
• Image Size
• Image Quality
• Image File Types
• Security Issues
• Fonts, Fusers, Toners Issues
• Bursting and Sorting Issues
• Scaling Issues

This is just a partial list of potential problems, challenges, and issues that All My Papers has faced and resolved.

To learn more about All My Papers IRD Printing and Check 21 solutions click on a product below.

• AmpLIB MICR OCR SDK - a Windows™ DLL based Software Development Toolkit that finds, reads, repairs, and extracts MICR line data from check images.
• IrdLIB - a COM Object Software Development Toolkit (SDK) for accurate and fast printing of Image Replacement Documents (IRDs) from X9.37 files and other sources. IRDLIB controls the forms, fonts, and printers.
• MicrBATCH - a Windows application that runs in either command line or interactive mode that detects Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) fields, image processes and extracts MICR data from the scanned check Image.
• X9 VIEWER - a .NET applet that allows viewing the content of X9.37 files such as the check image, field values, and record values.