Verify PAN card format — 5 letters, 4 digits, 1 letter, with entity-type decoding.
Positions 1-3: alphabetic series. Position 4: entity type (P=Person, C=Company, H=HUF, F=Firm, A=AOP, T=Trust, B=BOI, L=Local Auth, J=Artificial Juridical, G=Govt). Position 5: first letter of your surname (individuals) or entity name. Positions 6-9: sequential number. Position 10: check letter.
No — format-only. Verifying a PAN exists requires the NSDL/UTIITSL portal or your tax filing systems. This tool catches typos and fake PANs with invalid formats.
Most likely you entered the wrong surname at the time of PAN application, or PAN was issued before a name change. NSDL won't change it retroactively — but banks/employers accept any officially issued PAN regardless.
4th character differs: individuals have 'P', companies have 'C', partnerships 'F', HUFs 'H', etc. A company PAN cannot be used for individual tax filings and vice-versa.