# Payment Account Reference Inquiry
source: https://developer.mastercard.com/payment-account-reference-inquiry/documentation/index.md

## Overview {#overview}

The Payment Account Reference (PAR) is a value linked to the Primary Account Number (PAN) of a Mastercard-branded cardholder account. EMVCo introduced the industry-wide solution to address merchant and acquirer challenges resulting from tokenization. PAR links tokenized and PAN-based transactions without the need for a PAN as the linkage mechanism (1:1 PAR to PAN). PAR enables merchants \& acquirers to maintain fraud, loyalty and reporting programs dependent on PAN today.

PAR is 29 characters long. The first four positions of the PAR contain the Mastercard BIN Controller Identifier. Mastercard's Bin Controller Identifier is '5001' . Remaining 25 positions reflect a unique, randomly assigned value). 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)

Diagram simple

## Benefits {#benefits}

* Enable acquirers and merchants to uniquely identify a cardholder account without continued exposure and storage of the PAN.
* Maintain the value of fraud detection systems that have been dependent on the PAN today.
* Reduce a merchant's and acquirer's risk of data compromise and fraud commonly associated with the storage of PANs at rest. Acquirers and merchants can replace stored PANs with PARs in order to link transactions to consumer accounts
* Use PAR instead of the PAN to link account holders to loyalty programs without the need to store sensitive card data.

## How it Works {#how-it-works}

This API can be used by registered Merchants, Acquirers, Acquiring Processors, Payment Service Providers, and Digital Activity Customers to retrieve or generate the PAR value associated with a primary account number (PAN) or affiliated MDES Token where Mastercard is the Bin Controller. The PAR value allows tokenized transactions and PAN-based transactions to be linked without the presence of the PAN.

![](https://static.developer.mastercard.com/content/payment-account-reference-inquiry/documentation/img/overview1.png)

The Payment Account Inquiry service contains a single API called `/getPaymentAccountReference`. The API can be used by Mastercard Customers or authorized service providers to retrieve the PAR value by supplying an encrypted primary account number (PAN) or affiliated MDES Token where Mastercard is the Bin Controller.