The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has initiated an investigation into several prominent companies regarding their utilization of customer data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence to personalize pricing strategies. The agency has issued information requests to eight firms — Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, Accenture, Task Software, McKinsey & Co., Revionics, Bloomreach, and Pros — seeking insights into how these practices affect privacy, competition, and consumer protection.
This investigation targets a practice referred to as “surveillance pricing” or “dynamic pricing,” where companies display varying prices for the same products to different consumers based on factors such as location, demographics, credit history, and online behaviors.
Many of the firms involved provide transaction, sales, and pricing solutions to major corporations both in the U.S. and internationally. Task Software manages transactions for several large hospitality brands like McDonald’s and Starbucks, while Revionics specializes in retail price optimization tools for companies like Home Depot. Pros, recognized for its AI-driven pricing solutions, serves clients such as Nestlé, HP, and United Airlines, and collaborates with Microsoft as a technology partner.
The FTC aims to clarify this “opaque market” that uses consumer categorization to set targeted pricing. FTC Chair Lina Khan remarked, “Firms that harvest Americans’ personal data can put people’s privacy at risk. Now firms could be exploiting this vast trove of personal information to charge people higher prices. Americans deserve to know whether businesses are using detailed consumer data to deploy surveillance pricing, and the FTC’s inquiry will shed light on this shadowy ecosystem of pricing middlemen.”
The FTC is requesting information in four main areas: the types of surveillance pricing products and services offered by each company, their data collection methods, customer and sales data, and the impact of these practices on the prices customers ultimately pay.