Difference between Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Magnetic Ink Character Reader (MICR)

Optical Character Recognition (OCR):
OCR is the mechanical-electronic that converts the images into machine-encoded text. In other words, it is the use of technology to distinguish printed or handwritten text characters inside digital images of physical documents, such as scanned paper documents. 

Difference between Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Magnetic Ink Character Reader (MICR):

S. No.	OCR	MICR
1.	OCR is a scanner that scans the pages comprised of texts.	MICR is a character scanning technology but it utilizes magnetic ink and special characters.
2.	It can scan any type of printed text	It can scan the special information present in cheques.
3.	It supports a variety of shapes of fonts.	It supports only Pre-defined fonts like E-138 and CMC-7.
4.	All types of ink are used in OCR.	In MICR, only special type – magnetic ink created using iron oxide are used.
5.	In OCR, Scanned data is used for editing or printing.	In MICR, Scanned data is used for processing the cheques.
6.	For example, If one wants to convert a multipage document into a digital image, he can load the document into an OCR program, which converts the document to an editable text file after recognizing the original text. .	For Example, If one has an account in sector 62, Noida branch of Punjab National Bank (PNB). What would be its MICR code? City code for Noida: 110 ; Bank code for PNB: 032 ; Branch code for Sector 62: 013. Thus, the MICR code is: 110032013
7.	It does not necessarily require a secure method or scanning and processing of information.	A secure method is required for scanning and processing information.
8.	There is no such constraint associated with the OCR typeface subject to employing the right software.	There is a constraint associated with the MICR typeface i.e. only 14 characters are used includes 0-9 and special symbols.
9.	OCR data is less reliable compared to MICR data.	MICR data is more reliable compared to OCR data.
10.	It has ability to scan handwritten text.	It is not able to scan handwritten text.