Quarterly BAS Due (July–September)
Form 1099-NEC & Contractor Payment Reporting Check
Why this matters.
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 gave the Competition and Markets Authority direct fining powers — up to 10% of global turnover — for breaches of consumer protection law from 6 April 2025, and pricing algorithms have become a specific enforcement focus. Businesses increasingly use software to set prices dynamically based on demand, stock levels, competitor pricing, or an individual customer’s browsing history, location, device type, or purchase behaviour. The CMA has warned that personalised pricing — charging different customers different prices for the same product based on data profiling — can breach the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 where it involves misleading omissions, and has flagged that opaque “market” or “surge” pricing algorithms raise separate concerns under both consumer law and, where competitors’ pricing tools interact algorithmically, competition law on tacit collusion.
The risk for businesses is that pricing algorithms are frequently built or licensed from third-party vendors without full visibility into how they set prices, making it hard to demonstrate compliance if challenged. Under the DMCCA, a commercial practice is unfair if it involves a material omission — and failing to disclose that a price shown to a customer has been personalised, or that it changes based on demonstrated purchase intent (e.g. items sitting in a basket), can itself be the breach, independent of whether the underlying price is “fair.” Businesses using dynamic pricing software, personalisation engines, loyalty-tier pricing, or third-party revenue management tools should understand what data drives their pricing, whether that use is disclosed to customers, and whether their approach could be seen as exploiting behavioural data rather than simply responding to supply and demand.
