A permanent account number (PAN) is a ten-character alphanumeric identifier, issued in the form of a laminated “PAN card”, by the Indian Income Tax Department, to any “person” who applies for it or to whom the department allots the number without an application.

PAN stands for “Presence Across Nation”. PAN India Presence simply means when that one is operating at many places in India. To give you an example, if a one company is currently operating from a single place i.e. Gurgaon, but now it is going to start its operations at 10 different locations.

A personal area network (PAN) is a computer network for interconnecting electronic devices within an individual person’s workspace. A PAN provides data transmission among devices such as computers, smartphones, tablets and personal digital assistants. … The reach of a WPAN varies from a few centimeters to a few meters.

PAN card is compulsory and is required for doing most financial transactions. The I-T department has made it mandatory to link your bank account with PAN. The main reason for this is that your income tax refunds will be credited directly to your bank account.