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Payment Account Reference (PAR) is a unique value assigned to each Primary Account Number (PAN), commonly known as the card number mentioned on the card. RBI regulations prohibit all entities, except card networks and issuing banks, from storing card details. However, several use cases, such as offering targeted promotions and performing risk assessments, require uniquely identifying a card without storing its actual details. PAR provides a unique identifier with a one-to-one mapping to the actual card number, ensuring a consistent identifier is available while staying compliant.

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Use cases for PAR

You can use PAR for the following purposes:
  • Offers and loyalty: Merchants can use PAR to verify offer availability, such as ensuring that an offer can be availed only once per card.
    • Example: HDFC Bank Visa Credit Card offers a 10% discount on flight bookings, valid once a week.
  • Risk management: Merchants can use PAR to gather data on transaction patterns, analyse potential risks, and build custom risk checks, such as limiting transaction amount or number of transaction attempts per day.
    • Example: A specific card can only be used to purchase gift cards up to a maximum amount of INR 20,000 per month.

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Cashfree’s PAR as a service

Cashfree provides APIs to help you use PAR effectively:
  • Get PAR before a transaction: Retrieve PAR against a plain card or saved card before initiating a transaction
  • Get PAR for completed transactions: Retrieve the PAR of the card used for a successful transaction

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PAR APIs

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Fetch PAR details

Use Fetch PAR API to get the corresponding PAR by passing plain card details to Cashfree. This works for all major card schemes such as Visa, Mastercard, RuPay, American Express, and Diners. Sample request: 
curl --location 'https://api.cashfree.com/pg/utilities/pars' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'X-client-id: <x-client-id>' \
--header 'X-client-secret: <x-client-secret>' \
--header 'x-api-version: 2025-01-01' \
--header 'x-request-id: sIP3A1Vi9swEi8KF02cU' \
--data '{
    "card_number": "4594xxxx9647xxxx",
    "card_cvv": "xxx",
    "card_expiry_mm": "xx",
    "card_expiry_yy": "xx",
    "card_type": "PLAIN_CARD"
}'
Sample response: 
{
  "par": "V0010014623022637739353641436"
}

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Fetch saved cards

When you fetch saved cards from Cashfree to display on your checkout, the Get All Saved Card Instrument API includes PAR in the response. Once a card is tokenised, the Card Token Webhook also sends the PAR.

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Fetch PAR for a transaction

To get the PAR of the card used for a transaction, pass a transaction identifier (such as order ID or transaction ID) as input in the Get Payments for Order or Get Payment by Transaction ID API. This can be used for reconciliation purposes.
Note: PAR is currently not included in the Payment Status Webhook.

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Frequently asked questions

This is a request-based feature, available only to PCI-DSS-compliant merchants. To enable it, reach out to your account manager or write to care@cashfree.com.
Cashfree-hosted Checkout merchants use Cashfree’s offer engine to run offers. To set up risk checks, merchants leverage Cashfree’s RiskShield solution. Both offerings allow merchants to set up offer targeting strategies and risk rules through a self-serve flow on the Cashfree Merchant Dashboard, making implementation easy and effective.
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