Patent ID: 7058612

Claim:
A system for printing a negotiable instrument in accordance with payment instructions, the payment instructions comprising at least a payee name and a payment amount, the system comprising: a hash module for calculating: a compressed number representing the result of operating a compression function on the truncated portion of the payee name and the payment amount, wherein the truncated portion of the payee name consists of a limited character set payee name resulting from mapping each character of a first portion of the payee name to a limited character set; and a numeric sequence, the numeric sequence comprising a hash number representing the result of operating the hash function on a truncated portion of the payee name and the payment amount a payment module for generating an image file, the image file comprising: a recognizable alpha numeric representation of the payee name within a payee field; a recognizable numeric representation of the payment amount within a numerical amount field; a recognizable alpha numeric representation of the payment amount within an alpha numeric amount field; a MICR representation of a routing number and an account number within a first MICR zone across the bottom of the negotiable instrument; a MICR representation of the numeric sequence within a second MICR zone across the top of the negotiable instrument, the MICR representation in the second MICR zone being in an inverted relationship to the MICR representation in the first MICR zone; wherein: the numeric sequence comprising a hash number representing the result of operating the hash function on a truncated portion of the payee name and the payment amount.