# Get Payment Account Reference
source: https://developer.mastercard.com/payment-account-management/documentation/api-overview/get-par/index.md

This [API](https://developer.mastercard.com/payment-account-management/documentation/api-reference/index.md) is used by an Issuer to inquire if a Payment Account Reference (PAR) exists for a given PAN or MDES token. Authorized users may also use the API to generate a PAR for a PAN that does not already have one assigned. Refer to PAR details below.

The API performs an authorization check to validate that the caller has access to the PAR service.

The API performs a PAR query into the PAR Vault with the supplied PAN or MDES Token. When a PAR is returned from the PAR vault, the API will encrypt it using the wrapped encryption method with the Mastercard Customer's Encryption Public Key and include it in the API response. If an MDES token is passed in the request, the associated PAN will be retrieved from the token vault before checking the PAR vault.

## What is PAR {#what-is-par}

A Payment Account Reference (PAR) is an EMVCo standard value used to link tokenized and PAN-based transactions without PAN as the linkage mechanism. When the card is reissued and the issuer provides the lifecycle management update, PAR will be mapped to the new card number along with the associated tokens.

A PAR joins multiple tokens to a PAN (1:1 PAR to PAN).

![Alt text](https://static.developer.mastercard.com/content/payment-account-management/documentation/use-cases/img/par-1.png "PAR Joins with PAN")

A PAR is 29 characters long. The first four characters of the PAR will contain Mastercard's BIN Controller Identifier (i.e. "5001"). The remaining 25 characters are randomly assigned unique
numbers. Mastercard, when serving as BIN Controller, assigns PAR to Mastercard product ranges of:

* 222100--272099
* 510000--559999
* 639000--639099 (Maestro product ranges)
* 670000--679999 (Maestro product ranges)

## Who Can Use It? {#who-can-use-it}

Merchants, Acquirers, PSPs, and Gateways can leverage PAR for analytics, customer service, fraud/risk services, and loyalty.

Issuers and Issuer Processors can leverage PAR as part of their card personalization process to include PAR in the EMV tag of their physical cards as well as in the personalization profile in the digital wallets.

## How PAR can be generated? {#how-par-can-be-generated}

PAR can generated using two different methods today:-

* Tokenization and Digitization.
* Using [Get Payment Account Reference](https://developer.mastercard.com/payment-account-management/documentation/api-reference/index.md)

For Issuers, who support MDES tokenizations and are PAR participating, a PAR value will be generated and returned as part of provisioning process calls to Issuers. PAR value will also be returned to Token Requesters.

Issuers who do not support MDES tokenizations, but are PAR participating, can use PAR Lookup and Generation API to generate PAR for specific FPANs independently.

To generate a PAR for your non-tokenized PANs, set the `assignPar` to `true`.

If no PAR is returned, and the `assignPar` flag is set to true, the PAR Vault will generating a PAR when the account number corresponds to an eligible PAN from an account range the caller is authorized to perform updates on. A PAR will consist of:

* First 4 characters will be Mastercard's BIN Controller Identifier (i.e. "5001").
* Next 25 characters will be a Unique Identifier, which is an alpha numeric string with all uppercase characters.

## Accessing PAR {#accessing-par}

PAR can be accessed through different means.

* Issuers can fetch or lookup PAR using Get Payment Account Reference API using either Token or an FPAN.
* Merchants / Acquirers can fetch or lookup PAR using PAR Inquiry API.
* PAR is also present in Authorization 0100 and Financial 0200 messages for PAR participating Tokenized accounts. ![Alt text](https://static.developer.mastercard.com/content/payment-account-management/documentation/use-cases/img/par-in-auth.png "PAR Joins with PAN")