Walmart Has Disavowed Surveillance Pricing Before. This Time the CEO Signed It.

Walmart President and CEO John Furner published a letter to customers and members on Friday stating that Walmart will not use a shopper’s income, shopping history, urgency, or estimated ability to pay to set prices, and that the same rule applies to Sparky, the company’s AI shopping assistant. The letter compresses the position into one line: “We price the product, not the person.”

Furner laid out three commitments. Walmart will not set different prices based on who a customer is or the time of day. Its shopping tools will not use information customers share, through Sparky or otherwise, to raise their price or hide lower-priced options that meet their needs. And customers will decide whether to share additional details in exchange for more personalized help. The letter adds that people will continue to oversee pricing and that Walmart will monitor and test its technology against these commitments. It leaves one input explicitly in place: prices can still rise when an item costs more to buy or transport. Business Insider reported that Furner described the letter as a response to questions he has received this year about the company’s digital shelf labels and Sparky.

Walmart’s CEO Put His Name On A Position The Company Already Held

The substance is not new. When Walmart announced in March that its digital shelf labels would expand, the company said prices are the same for all customers in a given store regardless of demand, time of day, or who is shopping, and that the labels collect no information about shoppers. A pricing overview Walmart posted on July 1 names surveillance pricing and surge pricing as capabilities the company does not use and calls both inconsistent with Every Day Low Prices. An explainer published September 4 describes the labels as closed-system displays with no cameras, microphones, or facial recognition. A Walmart spokesperson told Fortune this week that the company does not charge different prices based on a customer’s personal information or purchase history.

What Friday’s letter adds is the chief executive’s name and a wider scope. The earlier statements centered on the shelf labels. The letter extends the commitment to AI tools and the information customers share with them, and it commits the company to testing its technology against the promise.

The questions behind it have been building all year. Walmart said in March that roughly 2,300 U.S. stores had digital shelf labels and that it expected the technology to be chain-wide within a year. Two Walmart patents, one granted in January for automated markdowns on its website and one in March for demand forecasting and price recommendation, drew fresh scrutiny in a Fortune report on Tuesday. Neither of the two experts Fortune consulted, from the Future of Privacy Forum and the ACLU, read the filings as describing prices set for individual shoppers. Earlier this month, Snopes examined social media claims that an August 20 update to Walmart’s privacy policy was tied to surveillance pricing, found no credible evidence that Walmart uses customer data that way, and noted that the data descriptors at issue had been added years earlier.

The Letter Arrived As The FTC’s Comment Window Closed

Friday was the deadline for public comment on the FTC’s proposed enforcement policy statement on personalized pricing. The statement, released August 19, says businesses that personalize prices should clearly disclose it where consumers reasonably expect prices will not vary based on their personal data. It warns that retailers may deceive consumers when they represent that a price is static or widely offered when it is in fact personalized. In late August, the National Association of Convenience Stores asked the FTC to extend the comment period by 60 days, to November 17. The agency extended it by seven days, to September 25.

State law is moving faster. Maryland’s Protection From Predatory Pricing Act, signed April 28, bars food retailers and third-party delivery services from using personal data to set higher individualized food prices beginning October 1. Connecticut has enacted a broader ban covering retail sellers and third-party delivery services. New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed a surveillance pricing ban on groceries and household goods in July. It takes effect in August 2027 and pauses new electronic shelf label deployments for a year beginning in February 2027, leaving existing labels in place. New York’s legislature passed its One Fair Price Act in June, and NY1 reported that Governor Kathy Hochul had not signed it as of mid-August.

The Unsettled Question Is Discounts, And The Letter Leaves It Out

Much of the debate in statehouses and at the FTC has turned on tailored discounts rather than individualized price increases. The National Retail Federation, whose members include Walmart, said in August that it would keep pressing to protect loyalty programs that deliver personalized offers, according to the Associated Press. NACS, in its request for more time, said the FTC’s proposal has implications for loyalty and rewards programs. Colorado Governor Jared Polis vetoed his state’s ban in June, saying he was “troubled by the bill’s approach to differentially lower pricing.” In New York, a business coalition has asked Hochul for an exemption for discount and loyalty programs, NY1 reported, while Attorney General Letitia James says the bill already protects them. Maryland’s law, which takes effect next week, carves out promotional pricing and loyalty program benefits.

The FTC’s statement touches the same seam from the other side. Among its examples of potential deception is a shopper who believes a personalized price is a discount based on purchase history when it is in fact a higher price based on other data about them. Furner’s letter speaks to higher prices and stops there. It commits that information customers share will not be used to raise their price and that, when they do share, Walmart will focus that data on ways that better serve them. As Fortune reported, Walmart’s privacy notice says customer information may be used to tailor ads, product recommendations, and promotions. The letter does not say whether individually targeted promotions fall inside or outside its promise.

Sparky Is Where The Pledge Meets Brand Budgets

For suppliers, the most operationally specific line concerns Sparky, and Sparky is growing. On Walmart’s August 20 earnings call, Furner said the number of customers using the assistant was up 70% from a year earlier and that customers who shop with it spend 40% more per order than those who do not. He described a shopper whose meal plan request produced recipes and one-click baskets, with Sparky recognizing ingredients the customer had recently bought online and in stores. Friday’s letter addresses Sparky directly, describing a customer’s engagement with it as an invitation to serve them better, not to use their personal information to set a personalized price.

The commitment not to hide lower-priced options that meet a shopper’s needs is a stated standard for how Sparky surfaces products. Sparky is also an ad surface: Adweek reported in January that Walmart had opened ads in the assistant, which can appear as sponsored prompts when shoppers ask for product recommendations. How the pledge applies to those sponsored placements, or to how Sparky weighs paid and organic results, is not addressed in the letter.

The Commitment Reads Differently For 1P Suppliers And Marketplace Sellers

For 1P suppliers, the letter governs the prices Walmart sets, and it preserves the input suppliers control most directly: cost. Furner writes that prices sometimes rise because an item costs more to buy or transport. Walmart’s July pricing overview describes reducing suppliers’ cost to serve as one of the ways the company sustains everyday low prices. Nothing in the letter changes how cost changes flow into retail price.

For Marketplace sellers, the letter leaves an open question. It is written in Walmart’s voice about the prices Walmart sets, and it does not say whether its commitments extend to prices third-party sellers set on Walmart.com. Sellers set their own prices, and Walmart’s Repricer tool, as described in its Marketplace resources, adjusts them against the winning Buy Box offer or prices found on external sites, which are market signals rather than shopper data.

Fortune’s report on Tuesday closed with the test the ACLU’s Jay Stanley applies to any retailer: whether it will charge you a different price once it knows who you are. Walmart has now answered that in writing. The FTC says Congress has not given it authority to prohibit personalized pricing outright, and its proposed statement declines, for now, to take any position on whether a fully disclosed personalized price could still be unfair.

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