The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has initiated an investigation into several prominent companies regarding their utilization of customer data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence for personalized pricing strategies.
Eight companies across various sectors—Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, Accenture, Task Software, McKinsey & Co., Revionics, Bloomreach, and Pros—received inquiries from the FTC on Tuesday. The agency seeks to understand how these pricing practices affect privacy, competition, and consumer protection.
These firms use data tools, including AI, to implement a practice known as “surveillance pricing” or “dynamic pricing,” which enables them to display different prices to consumers for identical products based on specific characteristics or behaviors such as location, demographics, credit history, and online shopping history.
Many of the companies under investigation provide transaction, sales, and pricing services to some of the largest businesses in the United States and worldwide. For instance, Task Software manages transactions for major hospitality brands like McDonald’s and Starbucks, while Revionics offers retail price optimization software to global chains, including Home Depot. Pros, known for its AI-driven pricing solutions, lists clients like Nestlé, HP, and United Airlines and collaborates with Microsoft on technology development.
The FTC aims to clarify this “opaque market” that categorizes consumers and establishes targeted prices for their products and services.
FTC Chair Lina Khan emphasized the risks of companies leveraging American citizens’ personal data, stating, “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.” She added that the inquiry aims to illuminate the complex landscape of surveillance pricing practices.
The FTC is particularly interested in four areas: the types of surveillance pricing products and services offered by each company, methods of data collection, customer and sales information, and the influence of these practices on the prices consumers pay.