Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday announced that the Permanent Account Number, or PAN, card will be made the single business identifier for all digital systems of all specified departments of the government, reported PTI.

PAN is a 10-digit alphanumeric number allotted by the income tax department to a person, firm or entity. The proposed system is expected to ease the compliance burden of businesses.

The Centre proposed an integrated system at the central and state level departments to auto-fetch common information and documents. Through this process, users will not have to undergo repeated submission of documents.

The new system is also proposed to ensure the authenticity of document during submission and lead to a quicker processing of requests.