PAN (Primary Account Number)

Primary Account Number is the cardholder account number on a credit, debit, or stored-value card. Under PCI-DSS, PAN must be rendered unreadable when stored (via hashing, truncation, or tokenization) and protected via strong cryptography in transit. Logging the PAN in clear text in application logs, exception traces, or debugging output is a frequent source of PCI violations and is detectable at code level.