[Mageia-discuss] Reading payment forms with a scanner

Fri Feb 15 11:02:01 CET 2013

On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 7:52 AM, Juergen Harms <juergen.harms at unige.ch>wrote:
+
+> A positive remark about swiss banks! But errorproofness for swiss payment
+> slips is also quite relative: (a) the long reference digit chains only have
+> a very simple longitudinal 1-digit checksum that catches many, but not all
+> errors that happen if you key them in manually and (b) all the OCR pograms
+> that I have tested are far from perfect. And yes, for some time I tried to
+> use one of these portable devices - they accumulate limited quality of
+> scanning with limited quality of OCR conversion: between handling and
+> checking I spent more time than I need for manual input and verification.
+>
+
+OK, quite possible. I haven't tried those myself, I had only experience
+with the kiosks which work excellently. However, there the system does
+cross-check the scanned data against the various databases (e.g. valid
+account numbers) as well.
+
+
+>
+> My recent error scenario illustrates this: my incorrectly keyed in digit
+> string happened to not trigger a checksum error, hence was accepted by the
+> ebanking system of my bank, but was then rejected by the destination bank
+> because the string did not make sense to them.
+>
+
+Arg. That's pain, indeed.
+
+
+>
+> Generalisation: maybe the concepts I put to work allow to create similar
+> tools / adjust the one I have made. I live part of my time in Austria -
+> Austrian slips should not be too difficult to handle along such lines. And,
+> maybe the mandatory introduction of IBAN input will create an incentive to
+> banks to improve the readability of their slips.
+
+
+That I doubt - if the slips aren't standardized, whether or not an IBAN is
+there makes little difference :( Moreover, unlike Switzerland where the
+banks actually do work together somewhat, it is still a wild west elsewhere.
+
+In Slovakia where I am from these slips are actually managed by the Post,
+originally as a mean to send money by post (you send a slip instead of
+cash) - that is what most people would know as a "check" there (classic
+personal checks were not used since the WWII or so). The Post has machines
+to automatically scan these. However, most companies send you a bill and
+either don't attach the slip (most banks don't accept them anyway, only the
+Post) or you must fill part of it by hand anyway.
+
+In Denmark you even have an option for the bills/slips to arrive directly
+to your account with your bank, then you can pay them with a click of a
+mouse if you don't have an automatic debit agreement.
+
+So I guess that it would always have to be an ad-hoc, country-specific
+hack.
+
+Regards,
+
+Jan
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