The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has initiated an investigation into several prominent companies regarding their use of customer data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence to customize pricing. The inquiry comes as a Coinbase poll indicates that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are closely competing for the support of crypto voters.
On Tuesday, the FTC issued orders to eight companies, including Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, Accenture, Task Software, McKinsey & Co., Revionics, Bloomreach, and Pros, requesting information about how their pricing strategies impact consumer privacy, competition, and protection.
These firms utilize data-driven techniques, like AI, in a practice known as “surveillance pricing” or “dynamic pricing,” where different prices for the same products are displayed to consumers based on their individual characteristics and behaviors. Factors such as location, demographics, credit history, and online activity can influence these personalized prices.
Notably, some of these companies provide transaction, sales, and pricing services to major U.S. and global retailers. Task Software manages transactions for well-known hospitality brands, including McDonald’s and Starbucks. Revionics specializes in retail price optimization software utilized by chains such as Home Depot. Pros, which provides AI-driven pricing solutions, has clients including Nestlé, HP, and United Airlines, and is also a technology partner for Microsoft.
The FTC aims to clarify issues surrounding this “opaque market” that categorizes consumers and sets targeted pricing for various products and services. FTC Chair Lina Khan stated, “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 agency is specifically seeking information in four areas: the types of surveillance pricing products and services offered by each company, their data collection methods, customer and sales information, and the ways in which these pricing practices affect the prices consumers pay.