Payment Account Reference: Gain Insight from Payment Data

Q: Can a PAR value be used to transact?

No, PAR is a nonfinancial identifier and cannot be used to process payments.

Q: Is the PAR specific to a cardholder or card account?

PAR is still tied to a specific card PAN (ie customer account) , it cannot be linked to a single customer across all their PANs. Another way of putting this is “it is not tender-neutral.” Merchants/platforms may use other approaches to link multiple card accounts under a user.

Q: When the PAN changes does the PAR value change as well (e.g. if a card is re-issued)?

In general, no. This is one of the benefits of PAR. However if an issuer does not inform the networks that a new PAN has been issued on the account, the network will consider the new PAN as a new account with a new PAR. This is not a common occurrence. That is up to the BIN-issuer (ie the network).

Q: If there are multiple users on a single card-account, will there be multiple PARs?

When there are multiple users on a card-account PAR will only be consistent if the same PAN is used . This is usually determined at the network-level. So if an additional user on an account receives a new PAN from the network, there will be a second PAR.

Key Benefits

Enhanced Marketing

Marketing teams get an enhanced customer profile whenever they pay with the same card account.

Guest Checkout Insights

Reveal guest checkout behavior by payment account and associate disparate transactions to a single profile.

Reduce PCI Scope

Businesses lower their risk profile by replacing sensitive PAN data with non-sensitive PAR values.

Reduce Loyalty and Reward Friction

Identify customers across channels using only their payment method, eliminating additional customer involvement and friction.

How it Works

Linking Transactions Across Payment Tokens

Payment Account Reference (PAR) was introduced by EMVCo to address two significant challenges: the inability to unify transactions made with the same card across different payment channels and reliance on sensitive card data to identify customers outside of transactions, which increased security risks and expanded PCI scope.

Unique PAR Values Retrieved in Partnership with Card Networks
PAR values are non-sensitive, 29-character alphanumeric data elements provided by the card networks. These values persist throughout the card life cycle, tying all of a cardholder’s payments across channels back to a single card account.

By creating a consistent PAR reference value across PSPs and token formats, merchants and platforms can enhance their marketing and loyalty programs, streamline business operations, and control fraud—all outside of PCI scope.

What You Get

Customer Intelligence

Consumer buying behavior can now be linked and identified across all payment channels for a more holistic view of target customers—allowing more personalized marketing.

Optimized Loyalty & Rewards

PAR users gain visibility into buyer behavior across payment channels to tailor loyalty programs and rewards.

Risk & Fraud Scoring

PAR can identify whether a transaction originates from an existing customer without any other inputs. This enhances customer intelligence while controlling for specific types of fraud like multi-account or promotional fraud.

Operational Efficiency

PAR values can save your operational team time by reducing the steps and complexity around customer tracking. It can also replace PCI data in your system if it is used outside of a transaction for purposes such as customer identification.

“We were able to cut down our PCI audit recertification times by 25-40%, by reducing the time needed to gather data.”

Chris Arnold, CTO at Bill360

FAQ

Can a PAR value be used to transact?

Is the PAR specific to a cardholder or card account?

When the PAN changes does the PAR value change as well (e.g. if a card is re-issued)?

If there are multiple users on a single card-account, will there be multiple PARs?

Payment Account Reference (PAR)