The Payment Account Reference (PAR) is a value linked to the Primary Account Number (PAN) of a cardholder account. EMVCo introduced PAR as an industry-wide solution to address merchant and acquirer challenges resulting from tokenization.  The PAR is a non-financial reference value assigned to each unique PAN. If a transaction is processed with a PAN or a token for the PAN, the PAR value returned in the transaction response will be the same value for each unique PAN.  For EMV applications, PAR may be included with EMV Tag 9F24.

Merchants may request a PAR value to be returned in the transaction response; if PAR is desired for all transactions; alternately a Device Setting is available to always return PAR when available. Not all issuers will return a PAR value.

If requested, either by the setting or in the transaction request, Portico will include the PAR in the transaction response in the AccountReference field.  When returned for a transaction, the PAR value will be included in ReportTxnDetail responses.