The Permanent Account Number (PAN) is one of India's most widely used identity and tax documents, so it turns up constantly in onboarding and KYC. This is a plain explainer of what PAN verification means and how it is usually approached; PAN verification is not a Certopact feature.
What PAN verification tries to establish
At its simplest, PAN verification checks that a PAN is genuine and belongs to the person presenting it. The weak version reads the number off a photographed card; the stronger version confirms the PAN against an authoritative source rather than trusting an image.
Common approaches
- OCR of a PAN card image — fast, but it only reads text and can be fooled by an edited image.
- Validation against an authoritative record — confirms the PAN is real, not just legible.
- Issuer-signed delivery via DigiLocker — the document comes straight from the source, digitally signed.
Why source-verified beats a photocopy
A scanned or OCR'd PAN proves nothing about authenticity — the same problem as any OCR-based check. An issuer-signed document, by contrast, is tamper-evident and genuine by construction.
How this relates to Certopact
Certopact does not offer a standalone PAN-verification service. Where a PAN document is needed, it can be pulled as an issuer-signed document through DigiLocker with the resident's consent — genuine and tamper-evident, not an OCR guess. For identity, Certopact verifies against Aadhaar. This is general information, not legal advice.