General Introduction

The FDP20 is a printer specifically designed to handle financial documents and passbooks - as the documents most commonly used in Financial/Banking applications - although it can also comfortably process other types of forms and passbook-type documents.

The design specification of a Financial Document Printer is for low-duty printing on pre-cut forms, (e.g. validations), producing high quality printouts both in terms of print and of the positioning of text on documents.

The unique characteristic of the Financial Printer is its ability to handle documents of uneven internal size and thickness (e.g., an open pass-book).

HISTORY

The FDP20 is the newest-generation printer in a family line that began in 1973, when Data Saab launched the PR5808, and which also includes Ericsson's PR366 (name later changed to the NDP366), and Nokia's highly successful NDP10.

More than 85,000 of these forerunners to the FDP20 were produced and delivered to customers all over the world.

Reviewing the market at the end of the 1980s, ICL Financial Terminals AB identified a new demand - for a printer capable of supporting existing financial applications, but versatile enough to conform to the changing requirements of the industry, including new industry standards and compatibility with open architecture systems.

With the needs of the 1990s in mind, ICL set out to design a 'standard' flatbed, single sheet printer capable of handling passbooks - including those containing a magnetic stripe - and a variety of multi-part documents. It also needed to be able to read pre-printed information on bills and cheques.

The designers started by taking the best of the NDP10 (reliability, suspended installation, proprinter) and the NDP366 (flexibility, multiple interfaces, high number of options). They added the latest in technology, focusing specifically on enhancements to size, low noise level, ease-of-use and throughput.

The result was the FDP20. A quality printer designed to be a market leader in terms of both its economics and its ergonomics; manufactured in Spain to the high standards of the Fujitsu organisation.