The Federal Trade Commission has proposed a statement describing when charging one customer more than another, based on what a company has learned about that customer, becomes an unfair or deceptive practice. The comment window closes on September 25, 2026. Missouri businesses have a second reason to pay attention, because the state’s own consumer statute already reaches a good deal of the same conduct.
Deadline: public comments on the Commission’s proposed enforcement policy statement regarding personalized pricing are due September 25, 2026, in docket FTC-2026-1057 (matter P034101). The original deadline was September 18, and the Commission extended it by one week on September 3.
Most price differences are ordinary and lawful. Fuel costs more in one county than another, and an insurance premium depends on the applicant. The practice the Commission is describing is narrower. It involves a merchant using data about a particular individual to estimate what that person is willing to pay, then quoting that person a price built on the estimate.
The proposed statement, issued on August 19, 2026, does not create a new rule and does not ban the practice. It explains how the Commission reads Section 5 of the FTC Act when a company sets prices this way. For a Missouri retailer running a subscription pricing tool, or a service business that recently added an algorithmic quoting feature, it is a useful description of the questions an enforcement lawyer would ask.
What the Commission is describing
The Commission frames personalized pricing as the use of personal data to set prices according to what a company believes a particular consumer is willing to spend. It distinguishes that from price variation everyone in a market experiences together. In its words, prices “will vary based on changes in supply and demand that affect everyone participating in the same market,” and prices “may vary based on regional differences in taxes, regulations, and market conditions.” Insurance and credit are called out as products whose prices necessarily turn on individual characteristics.
The concern is what modern data collection makes possible. The statement observes that information generated when consumers use ordinary technology can reveal “some of our most intimate details—our identities, interests, locations, credit histories, medical conditions, sexual interests, and religious and political views.” A merchant holding that kind of record can make a fairly precise guess about urgency, and urgency is what sets a reservation price.
Examples the Commission lists as raising concern
A food delivery service quoting higher prices to customers it believes are unlikely to leave home. A grocery chain charging delivery customers more based on data showing children in the household. A hotel raising rates for travelers whose trip appears connected to a funeral or an urgent personal matter.
A rideshare service charging more for a trip to a medical facility when the booking suggests an emergency. A retailer raising the price of security cameras for a shopper whose data indicates a recent crime. A retailer quoting a higher online price to a customer whose location shows them standing inside the store.
Two theories of liability
The first is deception. According to the proposed statement, retailers “may deceive consumers in violation of Section 5 when they represent, expressly or by implication, that a price is static or widely offered when in fact it is personalized.” The same problem arises through silence. A merchant may deceive a consumer when the consumer reasonably believes a price is the general price and the merchant fails to disclose that it is not.
A related theory concerns the stated reason for the personalization. The Commission writes that retailers “may violate Section 5 when they mislead consumers as to the basis for the personalization of a price or the effect of that personalization.” A customer told that a price reflects loyalty, who is in fact shown a higher number derived from an estimate of disposable income, has been given a false account of the transaction.
The second theory is unfairness. Under that analysis, the higher amount a consumer pays because of concealed personalization can itself be the substantial injury. The Commission’s reasoning on avoidability is the part worth reading twice: consumers cannot reasonably avoid the harm if they lack the information or tools to change their behavior, to dispute or correct inaccurate data, or to prevent the collection of the data in the first place.
Telling a consumer only that he is being shown a “specially selected” price would likely be misleading because it omits important information.
What an adequate disclosure looks like
The Commission’s disclosure standard has three parts. A disclosure should be clear and conspicuous, and it should state that the price is personalized, the basis of the personalization, and the type of data used. Marketing language that gestures at exclusivity without explaining anything does not satisfy that standard.
The contrast the statement draws
Not sufficient: telling the customer only that the price is “specially selected” for them.
Likely sufficient: a clear and conspicuous disclosure that the personalized price is based on the customer’s estimated willingness to pay, derived from data about that customer’s previous purchases from the same retailer through the same login account, provided the description is accurate and complete.
The statement also connects pricing to consent. Businesses that collect, use, or disclose personal data for personalized pricing without adequate disclosure or consent may violate Section 5, and so may businesses that price on personal data without sufficiently verifying that the consumer consented to the collection of that data for that purpose. A company that buys a data set and feeds it into a pricing engine has taken on the question of what the people in that data set agreed to.
Missouri’s statute reaches similar ground
Missouri has not enacted a comprehensive consumer data privacy statute of the kind now in force in roughly twenty other states. What Missouri has is the Merchandising Practices Act and a breach-notification statute, and the Merchandising Practices Act is broad. Section 407.020.1, RSMo, declares unlawful the use of “any deception, fraud, false pretense, false promise, misrepresentation, unfair practice or the concealment, suppression, or omission of any material fact in connection with the sale or advertisement of any merchandise in trade or commerce.”
The Attorney General’s regulation at 15 CSR 60-8.020 defines an unfair practice as one that either offends established public policy or is unethical, oppressive or unscrupulous, and that presents a risk of or causes substantial injury to consumers. The regulation adds that proof of deception, fraud, or misrepresentation is not required to establish an unfair practice. The overlap with the Commission’s unfairness analysis is close enough that a Missouri business evaluating a pricing tool should read both.
Missouri’s private right of action sits in Section 407.025, RSMo, and it is narrower than it was before 2020. Senate Bill 591 added requirements that a plaintiff show he acted as a reasonable consumer would in light of all the circumstances, that the challenged practice would cause a reasonable person to enter into the transaction that produced the damages, and that individual damages be proved with sufficiently definitive and objective evidence to allow the loss to be calculated with a reasonable degree of certainty. The statute also lets a court dismiss a claim as a matter of law where the practice would not mislead a reasonable consumer.
Those amendments raise the bar for a plaintiff, and they cut both ways in a pricing case. A defendant will argue that a shopper who never looked for a disclosure did not behave as a reasonable consumer. A plaintiff will answer that the reasonable-consumer standard is precisely the problem, because a price built on concealed data is not something a reasonable consumer can inspect. Neither argument has been tested in Missouri on facts like these, which is a reason for businesses to resolve the question by disclosure rather than by litigation.
What the Commission says it is not doing
The proposed statement is explicit about its limits. It acknowledges that “Congress has not given the Commission the authority to prohibit personalized pricing in all circumstances.” It also declines, for now, to take a position on whether some personalized pricing practices remain unfair even when fully disclosed. That open question is one of the more consequential items in the docket, and it is a fair subject for a comment from a business that would be affected either way.
Practical steps for a Missouri business
Determine whether any pricing, quoting, discounting, or cart-abandonment tool in use varies the number shown to an individual based on data about that individual. Vendors do not always describe this plainly, so put the question to the vendor in writing.
Identify the inputs. A tool that uses purchase history from the customer’s own account presents a different problem than one drawing on purchased third-party data about the customer’s household, health, or location.
Compare the marketing language against the mechanism. Terms such as “member price” or “price just for you” describe a discount, and using them for an increase is the misrepresentation the Commission describes.
Review consent. Confirm that the data feeding the pricing engine was collected with disclosure to the consumer covering this use, and keep the records that show it.
Review vendor contracts for indemnity, audit rights, and representations about data provenance, and consider filing a comment in the docket before September 25.
For consumers, the practical protections are ordinary ones. Comparing a logged-in price against a price seen in a private browsing window, checking a quote on a second device, and reading the account settings that govern data sharing will surface most personalization. A consumer who believes a price was inflated by concealed data can file a complaint with the Missouri Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division or with the Commission, and can submit a comment in the open docket.
Helpful resources
The coverage below is drawn from several vantage points and labeled by ownership, so you can weigh each account and reach your own conclusion.
Proposed Enforcement Policy Statement Regarding Personalized Pricing, matter P034101 (PDF) · Federal Trade Commission, United States federal agency, primary source.
Announcement of the proposed statement, August 19, 2026, and the extension of the comment period, September 3, 2026 · Federal Trade Commission, United States federal agency, primary source.
Docket FTC-2026-1057 on Regulations.gov · United States federal government, the official comment docket.
Section 407.020, RSMo, unlawful practices and Section 407.025, RSMo, private civil actions · Missouri Revisor of Statutes, State of Missouri, codified text.
15 CSR 60-8.020, definition of unfair practice (PDF) · Missouri Secretary of State, State of Missouri, codified regulation.
Section 407.1500, RSMo, notification of a breach of security · Missouri Revisor of Statutes, State of Missouri, codified text.
Two years since MMPA reform · The Missouri Bar, the state’s unified bar association, professional analysis rather than a neutral news account.
Consumer Protection Division · Attorney General Office of Missouri, State of Missouri, the office that enforces the Merchandising Practices Act.
Haake Law Group works with Missouri businesses on technology and data questions, on day to day business law including vendor and software agreements, and on startup formation and early operations. When a dispute has already started, the firm handles business litigation and general civil litigation in the St. Louis area and across Missouri.
Related on this site: Missouri Orders Six Prediction Markets to Stop Offering Sports Contracts: What the Cease-and-Desist Letters Mean
Related on this site: Credit card surcharges in Missouri: why debit card fees are prohibited and surcharging is riskier than it looks · Missouri Joins $664 Million Snap Finance Settlement: 3,707 Lease-to-Own Customers Owe Nothing More.
Review your pricing and data practices before the deadline
A short conversation can establish whether your pricing tools, vendor contracts, and consent language line up with the standard the Commission has described and with Missouri’s Merchandising Practices Act.
Or call (314) 732-1547
This article is educational only and is not legal or tax advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with Haake Law Group PC or Derek R. Haake. Federal enforcement policy, Missouri statutes, and administrative regulations change, and a proposed policy statement is not final agency action. Verify current requirements with the Federal Trade Commission, the Missouri Revisor of Statutes, and the Attorney General Office of Missouri, and consult a licensed attorney about your specific situation before acting.