The FTC Wants Sellers to Say When a Price Was Set for You Alone. Comments Close September 18.

The Federal Trade Commission published a proposed enforcement policy statement on personalised pricing on August 19, on a 2-0 vote to put it out for comment. The comment period closes on September 18, 2026.

Start with what this document is not. A policy statement is not a rule. It does not create an obligation that did not exist, and it does not bind a court. It is the Commission setting out, in advance, how it reads an existing law - Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices - as applied to a specific practice.

The practice being described

The statement defines personalised pricing as the use of personal data to set prices according to the amount that a company believes an individual consumer is willing to spend. The distinguishing feature is the input. The question is not whether a price moves, but whether it moves because of what a seller has inferred about the person looking at it.

On that definition, the statement expressly excludes pricing that varies with supply, demand, local conditions or regulation. A fare that rises in a storm is not personalised pricing. A fare that rises because the seller believes you in particular will pay it is.

Three routes to a violation

• Representation: implying that a displayed price is static, or the same one everyone sees, when it has been set for the individual.
• Omission: failing to disclose that a price is personalised in a context where consumers reasonably expect uniform pricing.
• Misdescribed basis: presenting a personalised price as something else - the statement gives the example of framing it as a loyalty discount when it in fact reflects inferred income or shopping behaviour.

There is also an unfairness limb: the statement indicates that undisclosed collection or use of personal data for the purpose of setting a price could itself violate the Act.

What a disclosure would need to say

The Commission's stated minimum has three parts. A seller would identify that the pricing is personalised, state the basis for the personalisation, and identify the types of data used to determine the price. That is a materially higher bar than a line in a privacy policy saying data may be used to improve offers.

When consumers see a listed price, they expect it to be same price that everyone else sees, not the retailer's estimate of how much they are willing to pay based on their personal data.

The insurance and credit exception in plain sight

The statement acknowledges that individualised pricing is long established in insurance and credit markets, where a price is openly built from information about the applicant and where separate statutes already govern how that is done. The implication is that the concern is not individualised pricing as such, but individualised pricing in markets where the shopper has no reason to expect it.