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Originally Posted by Otis Criblecoblis
That's what's known as a "counter check". As with all such bank forms, at least back in the day, it was printed up with the information for each individual branch. These checks were used whenever a customer's own personalized checks were not available, e.g. for a new account or when a customer ran out. They were also placed in the lobby so a customer could cash a check inside the branch without using one of his personalized checks.
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I never used a bank counter check, but I'm old enough to have used a grocery store counter check; this would have been some time around 1991-2. It's strange to think how even as late as the early 1990s they weren't accepting bank debit or ATM cards in a chain grocery store.
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Later, when MICR encoding (the line of printed numbers and symbols along the bottom) came into use, banks took these checks out of the lobby and the individual branch info off the checks.
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I know with some banks, at least, the first part of the account number tells the branch number, so you could say the info is still there, as part of the OCR sequence at the bottom of the check.