NRI PAN Card from the UK

If you're an NRI or OCI holder and any part of your life still touches Indian money — a flat you own, rent that lands in an Indian account, an NRE or NRO account, shares or mutual funds, or a tax return you're required to file — an Indian PAN card isn't optional. It's the single identifier every one of those transactions is checked against, and without it several of them simply can't go through. The good news is that getting one from the UK doesn't involve a flight home or a queue at a consulate: the application is filed online through Protean (formerly NSDL) or UTIITSL, and the only physical step is posting a signed document pack to India. NriDirect runs that whole process for you, from £100, with your application built and ready to post within 24 hours. Most clients see their ePAN in 7–12 days and the physical card land in the UK 20–25 days after posting.

This page covers everything a UK-based NRI or OCI holder needs to know before applying: which form to use, what documents you'll need, what our fee covers versus the separate government charge, how PAN connects to property, tax and banking, and what to do if you already hold a PAN that needs correcting.

Who actually needs this#

You're in the right place if you:

• Own property in India, or are in the process of buying
• Receive rent, dividends, or interest from an Indian source
• Hold, or want to open, an NRE, NRO or FCNR account
• File an Indian income tax return, or expect to soon
• Hold Indian mutual funds, shares or fixed deposits
• Are an OCI cardholder needing PAN for KYC on an Indian account

Already have a PAN but the details are wrong — old name, outdated address, a typo on your date of birth? That's a correction, not a fresh application. We handle both.

Form 93 or Form 95 — the test is citizenship, not residency#

This is the fork in the road that decides whether your file is accepted first time, and it is the single thing people most often get wrong, because the intuitive answer is the wrong one.

The test is which passport you hold, not where you live.

• Form 93 — individual Indian citizens. That includes NRIs who live permanently in the UK but still travel on an Indian passport. Being non-resident does not move you onto the foreign-citizen form.
• Form 95 — individual foreign citizens. That includes British citizens, OCI cardholders, and anyone applying on a non-Indian passport. Holding an OCI card does not make you an Indian citizen for this purpose — OCI is not citizenship, and OCI holders file on Form 95.

The two forms overlap heavily but diverge on the citizenship fields and on which identity and address documents are acceptable for someone based overseas. Filing the wrong one doesn't get corrected in place — the centre sends the pack back and you start again, which is what turns a three-week process into a two-month one. We confirm the right form against your actual passport before we file anything.

Applying for a PAN card from the UK, step by step#

There's no appointment to book anywhere in this process — it runs on a government portal and a document pack sent by post. Broadly:

1. Work out which form is yours — Form 93 if you hold an Indian passport, Form 95 if you hold a British passport or an OCI card.
2. File the form online, matching your name, date of birth and address to your passport exactly.
3. Print, sign and post the acknowledgment with your photo and supporting documents to the correct Indian processing centre — this part still has to happen on paper.
4. Wait for issue. The Income Tax Department returns a digital ePAN first, then mails the physical card to your UK address.

Nearly every delay we see traces back to two things: the wrong form, or a name or date-of-birth mismatch against the applicant's passport. Catching both before submission is most of what separates a smooth application from a rejected one. A rejected pack doesn't get corrected in the post — it has to be refiled from scratch, so the checking has to happen before anything leaves the house.

What we do for you#

1. You place the order, and we start building your file immediately.
2. You get an email once it's ready — normally within 24 hours.
3. You print it, attach your photo, sign, and post it in the pre-addressed envelope we provide.
4. Your ePAN acknowledgment and tracking reference arrive 7–12 days later.
5. The physical PAN card follows to your UK address, typically 20–25 days after posting.

Documents you'll be asked for#

• Your passport — Indian or British, whichever you're filing against
• Proof of UK address, dated within the last three months
• One PAN-spec passport photograph
• Your OCI card, where you hold one

If you have an Indian address available — through an Indian bank statement or a utility bill — we can use that instead of a UK address, and we'll flag exactly what, if anything, needs to be attested for your specific case.

What the government actually charges#

The government fee is billed in rupees and depends on which route your application takes. These are the current figures:

Almost every UK applicant lands on the first line: Rs 1,017, which is the domestic processing charge plus the overseas dispatch charge for posting the card to a UK address. The paperless tier looks cheaper but requires Aadhaar e-KYC, which most UK-based applicants simply cannot complete — so it is rarely a real option, and we will tell you plainly if it is available to you rather than quoting you a price you can't actually use.

Two figures to be careful of if you are comparing quotes. A slightly higher round-number fee still appears on one processor's index page under a legacy note dating from 2017 — it is stale. And the very low per-card prices you may have seen attached to PAN 2.0 are not current pricing: PAN 2.0 has been approved but is not live, and the Central Board of Direct Taxes has been clear that existing PAN holders are "not required to apply for a new PAN". Nobody should be selling you a PAN 2.0 card today.

What the £100 fee covers — and what it doesn't#

Your fee pays for the service, not the government charge:

• Working out whether Form 93 or Form 95 applies to you
• Filing on whichever of Protean or UTIITSL is faster for your case
• Assembling the document pack, with attestation guidance where needed
• A pre-addressed envelope to the right processing centre
• Case tracking through to PAN issue
• A free refiling if something we submitted gets rejected

The Indian processing charge above sits outside this and is paid to the government, not to us. Because rupee fees are revised from time to time, we confirm the live figure with you before you file.

Aadhaar and PAN — the exemption that isn't automatic#

This is worth reading carefully, because the headline and the reality differ.

NRIs and OCI holders are exempt from the requirement to link PAN with Aadhaar — non-residents on one ground, non-citizens on another, under the Department of Revenue's 2017 notification. That much is straightforward.

What is not straightforward is that the exemption is legal, not automatic. A great many NRI PANs were nonetheless marked inoperative, because the Income Tax Department's systems had no way of knowing the holder was non-resident. To rely on the exemption in practice, the holder has to intimate their NRI status to their jurisdictional Assessing Officer. If nobody has ever done that for your PAN, the exemption exists on paper while your PAN sits inoperative in the system — and an inoperative PAN is exactly what stalls a property completion or a bank KYC check.

If you already hold a PAN and have never intimated your status, tell us: it is a far smaller job to sort out in advance than in the middle of a transaction.

Where PAN actually bites: property, tax, and NRE/NRO#

• Property. Both the sale deed and the TDS filing on an Indian property transaction need the buyer's and seller's PAN. No PAN, no registration.
• Rental income. Declaring rent from an Indian property, and reclaiming tax already deducted at source, both run through PAN.
• NRE / NRO / FCNR accounts. Indian banks require PAN to open these, and accounts opened without one are usually restricted until it's added.
• Higher TDS without one. Rent, interest and dividends paid to someone with no PAN on file are taxed at a noticeably higher deduction rate than the same payment to someone who has quoted one.
• Investments. KYC on Indian mutual funds, shares, and fixed deposits is built around PAN — without it, new investment and some redemptions get blocked.

People most often come to us once one of these has already stalled — a sale that's ready to complete, a bank account frozen pending KYC, a mutual fund redemption that won't process. In every one of those cases the fix is the same PAN application we'd have run anyway, just under more time pressure and with a transaction on hold in the meantime. It's cheaper, in both time and stress, to have PAN sorted before you need it.

Fixing a PAN you already hold#

A wrong name after marriage, an out-of-date address, a mistyped date of birth — these go through a correction request rather than a new application. If the details are right and you have simply lost the card, a reprint is the cheapest route from the UK at Rs 959, and we can file that instead of a full application. We confirm what's changing, file it, and track the reissue. Left unfixed, a mismatch between your PAN and your bank or tax records tends to surface at exactly the wrong moment.

DIY filing vs using NriDirect#

Filing Form 95 yourself and posting your own pack is entirely possible — some NRIs do it. Where it usually goes wrong isn't the portal itself but the detail: which form applies now that the numbering has changed, what counts as acceptable overseas proof of address, and which processing centre a UK-posted pack should actually go to.

Both routes end at the same PAN. The difference shows up when something's filled in slightly wrong — with a self-filed application that means starting over; with us, it's caught before it's posted.

Timelines, and what tends to change#

Portal rules, accepted document formats and fee levels are revised periodically, so rather than rely on last year's checklist, we confirm the current requirements for your exact case — Indian citizen or foreign citizen, Indian or UK address — at the point you sign up. Once your pack reaches India, allow 7–12 days for the ePAN and 20–25 days for the physical card. If you're against a deadline — a property completion, a bank account that's waiting — tell us at the outset and we'll prioritise accordingly. PAN is often filed alongside an OCI application or an Indian passport renewal.

ePAN vs the physical card — which do you actually need?#

Once your application is processed, you get two things at different points: a digital ePAN — a PDF carrying your PAN number — followed later by the embossed physical card by post. For most day-to-day purposes in India, quoting your PAN to a bank, a broker, or on a tax filing, the ePAN is enough the moment it lands, so you're not stuck waiting three weeks before you can use your number. The physical card matters more where a photo-ID card is specifically asked for in person, which for a UK-based applicant is rarer. Both are issued as part of the same filing — there's no extra charge from us to receive the physical card once the ePAN is through.

Frequently asked before people order#

A few questions come up on nearly every call. If your OCI card lists your address as outside India, that's fine — Form 95 is built for exactly that situation and doesn't require an Indian residential address. If you don't have an Aadhaar number, that's also fine for filing: the paperless route needs Aadhaar e-KYC, but the standard posted route that most UK applicants use does not. And if you're filing for a spouse or family member too, each applicant needs their own separate PAN — there's no combined household PAN — though we can run several applications in parallel so the household is covered in one round.

Why work with NriDirect#

We file NRI and OCI PAN applications every week, mostly for people buying property, opening accounts, or filing returns in India from the UK. We moved to the current Form 93 and Form 95 the month they came into force, rather than continuing to file on the old numbering as a good deal of the market did. The whole route stays online and by post — you never need to leave home — and our team is reachable by phone, WhatsApp, and email throughout.

Get started#

Call +44 7454 034747, WhatsApp +44 7454 034747↗, or email [email protected] — we'll confirm which form applies to you and send your document checklist the same day.