Payment Account Reference (PAR): What is it, and why is it useful

Payment Account Reference (PAR) is a 29-character identifier tied to an underlying card account that remains consistent across card reissues and tokenized versions such as merchant-initiated network tokens and Apple Pay or Google Pay device tokens. As tokenization makes a single card appear as multiple unrelated payment credentials, PAR can help businesses recognize returning customers without relying solely on changing self-reported information or predictive identity models. Its potential uses include preventing promotion abuse and blocklist evasion through repeatedly regenerated wallet tokens, supporting card-linked loyalty and more accurate lifetime-value calculations across online and in-store purchases, and confirming that deposits and withdrawals use the same account for anti-money-laundering controls. Although PAR was introduced by EMVCo in 2016 to preserve account-level continuity amid tokenization, access varies by payment credential: it may be available during merchant-initiated token generation but is generally not shared by digital wallets or consistently provided before authorization for manually entered cards. The text presents Evervault’s PAR Lookups service as a way to resolve PARs for PANs, DPANs, and MPANs throughout the transaction process.

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