What is PAN Verification API?
The PAN verification API service offers a straightforward and robust solution for validating the authenticity of a PAN card by cross-referencing it with the government database maintained by the issuing authority. The process involves submitting the PAN number to the issuing authority and receiving in return the confirmation of validity along with other personal details held in the government database.
For those unfamiliar with the Indian PAN (Permanent Account Number) card, it serves as the counterpart to the Tax ID number and is issued to both individuals and businesses in India.
PAN as proof of ID
PAN card is widely accepted as proof of ID by pretty much all service providers in India. Note that as PAN does ‘not’ have address on them and therefore can only be used as Proof of ID (POI). However, the PAN has the specimen signature of the Individual which makes it ideal for verifying signatures of the applicant. Furthermore, PAN is mandatory for obtaining financial services and filing income tax in India. Therefore, it is imperative for service providers to verify the PAN card to ascertain its genuineness prior to onboarding the consumer.
A typical PAN card issued to an individual would look as follows: The Individual PAN has the First Name, Last Name, Date of Birth, the PAN number, Photo and the signature of the PAN holder.
A typical PAN card issued to a business would look as follows: The Business PAN has the Company Name, Date of Incorporation and the PAN number.
PAN card structure
The ten-digit PAN number is structured as follows:
- The first five characters are letters (in uppercase by default), followed by four numerals, and the last (tenth) character is a letter.
- The first three characters of the code are three letters forming a sequence of alphabets letters from AAA to ZZZ
- The fourth character identifies the type of holder of the card. Each holder type is uniquely defined by a letter from the list below:
A — Association of persons (AOP)
B — Body of individuals (BOI)
C — Company
F — Firm
G — Government
H — HUF [Hindu joint family|Hindu undivided family]
L — Local authority
J — Artificial juridical person
P — Individual or Person
T — Trust (AOP)
- The fifth character of the PAN is the first character of either: of the surname or last name of the person, in the case of a “personal” PAN card, or of the name of the entity, in the case of a “business” PAN card.
- The last (tenth) character is an alphabetic digit used as a check-sum to verify the validity of that current code.
The above structure helps in the initial validation of a PAN number even before the PAN is sent to the Income Tax Database for verification.
How to instantly verify PAN numbers using our Dashboard (no code and no integration needed)?
Let’s take a real-life example. Let’s suppose you want to verify the PAN card of your User/Customer/Employee before onboarding them into your organisation.
You can login to our dashboard and instantly verify a PAN card. Absolutely no code or integration is needed and you can sign up and start using this service in a couple of minutes.
How to do bulk PAN verification in our Dashboard?
You can do an individual PAN verification or if you have a number of customers who have submitted their PAN details you can do a bulk PAN verification check by uploading an excel file with all of the PAN numbers to be verified.
Bulk PAN verification comes in handy when you want to verify a lot of PAN numbers in one go. For example, verifying the PAN cards of your new employees en masse each month or periodically verifying vendor PAN and GST before they are approved for payments to cut down on fraudulent vendors. This will instantly run through all of the records and provide you the output in one go. All of the details can be viewed in the dashboard and can be downloaded to your own server once completed.
How to integrate our PAN verification API into your own Application
It is fairly easy to accept and verify the PAN card in real time using simple APIs. In order to do a real time PAN verification within your own application, you will need to make an API call by entering the PAN number of the User along with the API authorization credentials. Please refer to the full API details here. You can also test this in postman by following the steps for PAN verification in postman here.
Here’s a high-level overview of the steps you’ll need to follow for PAN verification API:
Sign up for ATLAS API keys: Please book a demo so we can create your account and share the API keys in order for you to use the PAN Verification API in your application.
Make PAN Verification API requests: Use the API keys (Key ID and Key Secret) to make requests to the ATLAS API server, passing in the PAN Number as input. The API will then return the response as obtained from the Income Tax Database.
Parse the PAN Verification API response: The response from the API will be in a JSON format, which you can parse using a library like the JSON module in Python (or any software of your choice).
Integrate the response JSON into your application: Once you have the response, you can use it in any way in your own application. For example, you might store the JSON response values in a database, perform further analysis on it (such as what to to for valid or invalid PAN numbers), or display it to the user.
A sample PAN verification API request is here:
And the response will be as follows:
The real time PAN verification takes no more than 2-3 seconds so the user experience is not hampered doing this on the fly at the time of onboarding to verify the genuineness of the PAN card.
If you are already accepting PAN documents via your web or mobile applications, once the customer uploads the image, you can make an API call to do an OCR with quality checks and then a PAN verification in real time. This will vastly speed up your onboarding process, reduce fraudulent and poor quality PAN cards being uploaded and reduce drop-offs considerably.
In addition, we provide PAN KRA status verification whereby you can check if the PAN provided by the customer is already available in the KRA database. Please get in touch with us so we can show you a demo of this feature.
How much does PAN verification cost?
PAN verification pricing is based on your volumes as they are discounted at large volumes. All our pricing is transparent and provided to you upfront without any hidden fees. You can view your PAN verification statement in real time from our dashboard so you know exactly what you are paying for. Please get in touch with us so we can understand your needs and share our pricing and provide you with trial access to try PAN verification before you buy.
Is PAN Verification approved by regulators in India?
PAN verification is now an essential part of customer onboarding through assisted and unassisted video kyc solutions. The regulators are in favor of such validations to ensure that the person undergoing Video KYC or other means of non-face to face onboarding is the true owner of the PAN card.
Aside, there are also ways to verify that the name in the PAN card matches with the KYC compliant Bank Account by doing a penny drop check and matching the Bank Account Name with PAN Name proving the identity of the person with great confidence.
Is PAN Verification mandatory for selling financial products in India?
The short answer is Yes. Pretty much all regulators in India (RBI/SEBI/IRDAI/TRAI) accept PAN as proof of ID and is mandatory for obtaining financial products. Therefore, if you are in the BFSI segment and selling financial products or services and are required to collect KYC from your customers, then collecting and verifying PAN should be your KYC strategy. And what better way than to accept a PAN card from your users and do an instant PAN Verification using our dashboard or using our APIs to remain compliant with the current digital onboarding regulations.
How is our PAN verification different from others?
The first difference you will notice is that you can get started instantly without having to worry about having any technical integrations. Simply login to our portal, enter the PAN details, view or download the output. You will get the response in 2-3 seconds. For those who are keen to integrate the PAN verification solution into their own customer onboarding or verification flow, we provide an easy to use API.
The second difference is the single and bulk verification options that we provide for customers. This will enable you to use our system in different ways (real time and in batch mode).
The third difference is the fraud prevention, privacy and security layers built in to help you protect your customer data and save money. For instance, For valid inputs (PAN Number following Income Tax Database format), the PAN Verification API will return the responses as received from the Income Tax Database and you will incur normal costs. We get paid only when the call succeeds and you get a valid response from the Income Tax Database.
For fake or invalid inputs (where the PAN does not follow the Income Tax Database format), we identify them even before sending it to the source for verification. This will also ensure that you are not charged for this service (even though we have processed it and have incurred cloud costs but have not incurred NSDL charges so we are passing them on to our Clients).
You can read the PAN Verification FAQ for more information.
Finally, we have built a robust zero knowledge system (as an empaneled development agency for UIDAI) in line with the core Aadhaar Architecture principles to not store the PAN details once the verification is completed. If you are using our Verification APIs, then once you receive the API output, none of your data is stored in our servers. If you are using our no code Dashboard, you can choose to download your data to your own servers and apply a purge policy to remove them from the dashboard.
Did you know that other than PAN, you can also verify Bank Account (Penny Drop), Voter ID, Driving License, GST (Business Verification) and Aadhaar Offline in India. These ID verification APIs are easy and simple to integrate (or can be used with our dashboard without integration) at extremely low costs. Please do checkout all of our verification services that we provide to verify Indian individuals and businesses.
Bank Verification (Penny Drop)
Verifies the legitimacy of the Bank Account (for all Bank Accounts in India) by dropping INR 1 into the beneficiary’s Bank Account. The verified Bank Account will return the beneficiary’s name.
PAN Verification
Verifies the legitimacy of the Permanent Account Number (PAN) against the issuing authority (Income Tax Department of India).
PAN KRA Verification
Verifies whether a given PAN number is registered with any of the KRA (Know your customer Registration Agencies in India). If the PAN is enrolled with any of the KRAs it will bring the enrolment status of the customer.
GSTIN Verification
Verifies the legitimacy of the Goods and Services Tax Number (GST) against the issuing authority (GSTIN). Verified GSTIN returns the full business details of the GST number.
Voter ID Verification
Verifies the legitimacy of the Voter ID (EPIC – Electors Photo ID Card) against the issuing authority.
Driving Licence Verification
Verifies the legitimacy of the Driving License against the issuing authority (Parivaahan). Verified Driving Licence returns the demographic details and the photo of the driver.
Passport Verification
Verifies the validity of the Passport number. Note that this is applicable only for Indian passports which has a File Number printed on the back page of the passport.
Company Verification
Verifies the Company Name/CIN and returns relevant details like Company Data, Director details and Charges existing on Company/LLP.
Director Verification
Verifies the DIN and PAN of the Director and if valid, returns the relevant details with match status as True or False respectively.
FSSAI Verification
Issued by the Food Safety Association of India, this helps verify the FSSAI status of a company and returns the relevant company details associated with FSSAI certification.
MSME (Udyam) Verification
Verifies the Udyam Registration number (MSME India) and returns relevant details like Company Name, Unit details and Address of the Company.
Book a demo to see how we can help with your verification needs and get a quick proposal.
About
We are your friends at frslabs
FRSLABS is an award-winning research and development company specialising in customer onboarding, identity verification and fraud prevention solutions for businesses. Whether you are a big bank, insurance, telco or a small investment broker, we help you onboard and verify your customers with greater flexibility, compliance and reliability.
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