The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has initiated an investigation into several prominent companies regarding their use of customer data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence for personalized pricing strategies.
The FTC’s inquiry involves eight firms, including Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, Accenture, Task Software, McKinsey & Co., Revionics, Bloomreach, and Pros. These companies have been asked to provide information about how their pricing practices impact privacy, competition, and consumer protection.
The investigation focuses on a practice known as “surveillance pricing” or “dynamic pricing,” where companies present varying prices for the same products based on consumer data such as location, demographics, credit history, and shopping behavior.
Many of the firms under scrutiny offer transaction, sales, and pricing services to major corporations in the U.S. and internationally. For example, Task Software manages transactions for notable hospitality brands like McDonald’s and Starbucks, while Revionics supplies retail price optimization tools to global chains, including Home Depot. Pros, which specializes in AI-driven pricing solutions, serves clients like Nestlé, HP, and United Airlines and partners with Microsoft on technology development.
FTC Chair Lina Khan emphasized the need for transparency, 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 Americans should be informed about whether businesses are using detailed consumer data to implement surveillance pricing, and the FTC’s investigation aims to clarify this complex pricing environment.
The FTC is particularly interested in four areas: the types of surveillance pricing products and services offered by these companies, their data collection methods, customer and sales data, and the effects of these practices on the prices consumers pay.