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.
Eight firms spanning various sectors — including Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, Accenture, Task Software, McKinsey & Co., Revionics, Bloomreach, and Pros — received inquiries from the FTC on Tuesday, focusing on the implications of these pricing practices on privacy, competition, and consumer protections.
The companies in question employ a method known as “surveillance pricing,” often referred to as “dynamic pricing,” which allows them to display different prices to consumers based on individual attributes such as location, demographics, credit history, and browsing or shopping behavior.
Many of the investigated firms are key providers of transaction, sales, and pricing solutions to large corporations both in the U.S. and internationally. Task Software manages transactions for major hospitality clients such as McDonald’s and Starbucks. Revionics specializes in retail price optimization software and pricing analytics for global chains like Home Depot. Pros claims to offer AI-driven pricing solutions and has notable clients including Nestlé, HP, and United Airlines, along with partnerships with Microsoft.
The FTC aims to clarify the “opaque market” characterized by tailored prices based on customer categorization. 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 seeking information on four main aspects: the types of surveillance pricing products and services offered by each company, the methods of data collection, customer and sales information, and the influence of these practices on the prices consumers pay.