Column misalignment between a character string recognized by a MICR and a character string recognized by optical character recognition is corrected to improve character recognition reliability. A magnetic data reading unit detects the magnetism of a character string printed in magnetic ink and outputs the detected magnetic data. An image reading unit optically reads the same character string printed in magnetic ink and outputs the image data. A magnetic data recognition unit applies a character recognition process to the magnetic data output by the magnetic data reading unit and outputs magnetic data recognition result. An image data recognition unit applies character recognition to the image data output by the image reading unit and outputs image data recognition result. A recognition result comparing unit applies a column offset detection process to detect misalignment between the character columns in the magnetic data recognition result and image data recognition result, then applies a column offset correction process to correct the column offset and align corresponding character columns, and then compares corresponding character columns in the magnetic data recognition result and image data recognition result based on the character strings after correcting the column offset and outputs a final recognition result.