Hello, the following question was posed to me today that I do not have an answer for. Do you know if there is a requirement to remove MICR information from deposit images that are displayed in online banking? If not, are banks doing this?

Do you mean that the MICR line on images, which dispalys serial #, account #, and dollar amount (among other codes that may be included), be removed? if you remove that data from the image how is the payment information to be collected and passed along?

or are you asking that once your bank has compiled their incoming cash letter and is ready to make the information available to your customers online, that you strip the data from the images? meaning the person who wrote the check that is clearing their account no longer has a MICR line on it?

I am thinking they were asking about the second scenario.

I am confused. I write a check and when I have access to my own checks that have been processed through on-line banking you strip the MICR line off of it? Why?

This is something that came up in a conversation that I was not involved in. The question posed to me was "do we need to remove the MICR information from deposit images when displayed in online banking?". I could not find anything anywhere that indicated that this was a requirement in any regulation or any guidance from the regulators. When that happens, I like to bounce it off the guru's to see if I am missing something.

Ah - you are talking about items that the customer has deposited. I am not too sure how common it is for deposited items to be made available to the customer after the fact, but if you do, I am not sure why you would do that. All they have to do is photocopy the check before they deposit it.