Actually there are cursive numbers. I learned them years ago in 2nd or 3rd grade.
https://www.google.com/search?q=cursive+numbers&client=firefox-b-1-d&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=OkM-OfoMundFAM%253A%252C9VjKXNtlEtv3uM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kSDPt8P7YTcVdFYauAGv0jJU2R4aw&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjQsIXD-v3iAhXpp1kKHT4UBl0Q9QEwAnoECAQQCA#imgrc=OkM-OfoMundFAM:
However, I don’t recall using them ever outside of cursive class.
There are cursive numbers, but those aren’t them; those are lower-case figures. Non-lining numerals. Kind of–3 and 5 should descend.
Computers are pretty good at knowing human handwriting, look at the USPS.
At some banks, the ATM just takes whatever you keyed in at the deposit, and they confirm/correct whether it was accurate when the humans take the check out of the machine a day or three later. They might hold some of the funds for a minute.
Machine reading is high quality but not 100% reliable. Even MICR (and the proof machine) makes mistakes sometimes, so keep your receipt.
I’ve been able to do no-envelope deposits here for a while, and it has been the only way to deposit cheques and cash through an ATM for several years. Pretty much all cheque processing in Canada is done by OCR at the back end, with the digital image stored and the paper cheque destroyed once confirmed. I went to a presentation at a financial conference 10-12 years ago, where they showed how this works in some detail. Even in the rare case where the computer can’t decipher the cheque, the human operator is looking at the digital image, and it is very rare that they need to see the paper copy at all.
A significant difference for Canadian banking is that it is mostly federally regulated (co-op credit unions are provincially regulated) with a small number of large national banks. Back-end processing is all through a single federally-charted corporation, Payments Canada. We don’t have the patchwork of small and large, state-regulated banks that the US has. This makes it easier to introduce wide-spread changes in banking standards and processes. (Banking in Canada - Wikipedia)