On April 28th, 2026, Maryland Governor Wes Moore signed HB 895, making Maryland the first state to ban surveillance pricing on food products. Effective October 1st, 2026, it prohibits food retailers and third-party delivery services from using personal customer data to charge the same individual different prices for tax-exempt food items.
If you work with restaurants, grocery, or delivery merchants in Maryland, this will directly affect your partnerships.
What This New Law Actually Prohibits
Maryland’s approach targets a specific practice: using personal data to increase prices for individual customers. The law defines this narrowly as “discriminatory pricing that’s specific to individual consumers based on their personal data, regardless of whether the seller collected or purchased that data.”
Merchants can still use dynamic pricing strategies based on standard business factors. They can adjust prices for supply and demand, geographic costs, seasonality, raw material costs, and tariff changes. They can offer loyalty programs, temporary discounts, and promotional pricing. None of this changes under HB 895.
What does change: Merchants cannot use personal data like purchase history, location tracking, or demographics to jack up prices for certain customers while charging others less for the same item.
Compliance Challenges and Language Ambiguities
Maryland’s bill aims to exempt standard pricing factors, but the wording creates some compliance gray areas that could affect your advice to merchants.
The law states that its restrictions “do not apply to” standard factors like supply and demand or geographic costs. However, earlier drafts explicitly excluded these factors from the definition of dynamic pricing itself. This leaves some room for interpretation: Are these factors exempt because they’re inherently fair, or are they simply not addressed this time?
For agents and ISOs advising merchants, this means erring on the side of documentation. If a merchant’s pricing strategy is based on supply, demand, seasonality, or cost factors, make sure those factors are clearly logged in their systems and defensible. If a pricing decision coincides with personal data collection but is based on market conditions, that distinction matters for compliance.
What Other States Are Watching
Maryland isn’t alone. California, Hawaii, and New York are all advancing similar pricing regulations. The terminology varies significantly: California is developing algorithmic pricing rules, Hawaii is focused on real-time demand-based pricing, and New York is exploring personalized algorithmic pricing disclosures.
If you work with multi-state merchants or larger chains, this becomes a portability issue. Pricing systems compliant in Maryland may not be compliant in California in six months. Staying ahead of these regulations now protects your relationships later.
If a merchant’s system is non-compliant, they have months to fix it. Merchants can reconfigure algorithms, separate personal data from pricing logic, and revise pricing rules. The earlier merchants know what needs to change, the smoother the transition.
For new merchants, make HB 895 compliance part of your onboarding conversation in Maryland. Build it into your account setup questions and system recommendations. Compliance up front beats scrambling later.
Maryland’s surveillance pricing ban sets a precedent. By helping your merchants understand and meet this standard now, you’re also preparing them for the next wave of state-level pricing regulations coming down the line.
What to Audit With Your Merchants
Start by reviewing merchant systems for three things:
- Pricing software inputs. Does the POS system, pricing engine, or third-party pricing tool use personal customer data as a pricing variable? If so, the merchant needs to reconfigure the tool or stop using that data before October 1.
- Data collection practices. Is the merchant collecting customer data and feeding it into pricing logic? Collecting data for a voluntary loyalty program is permitted. Using that data to raise prices is not.
- Delivery pricing. If the merchant offers delivery in-house or through partners, are fees or item prices adjusted based on personal customer data?
Document the Business Reasons
Documentation is the best defense. If a merchant’s prices move with supply, demand, or cost, those drivers should be logged separately from customer-level data. If a customer pays a different price, the merchant should be able to show the business reason, such as a cost factor, a promotion, or loyalty enrollment, without pointing to personal data.
Protected Class Data: A Separate Risk
Protected class data deserves its own review. If a merchant’s pricing or service decisions use information about race, ethnicity, gender, disability, religion, or similar characteristics, and the effect is to deny service to customers in those groups, the Act prohibits it. This applies even when personalized pricing is not the driver. For example, if location-based pricing happens to correlate with protected class demographics, that could create liability. That is not automatically a violation, but it is a compliance risk worth reviewing.
The Broader Regulatory Wave
Maryland is the first state to regulate personalized pricing specifically in the food industry, but it is not alone. Three federal bills are pending: the Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act of 2025, the Stop AI Price Gouging and Wage Fixing Act of 2025, and the One Fair Price Act of 2025. New York’s Algorithmic Pricing Disclosure Act requires retailers that set prices with personal data to display a disclosure. New Jersey and Pennsylvania have bills in progress as well.
If you work with multi-state merchants, getting compliant in Maryland now gives you a framework for the rules that follow.
Your Action Plan
- Identify Maryland merchants that use dynamic or personalized pricing, and confirm whether they meet the 15,000 square foot and tax-exempt food thresholds.
- Review their pricing systems and data inputs together.
- Document what you find and whether the current setup is compliant.
- If a system needs changes, agree on a fix and timeline before October 1.
- For new Maryland merchants, add surveillance pricing questions to your onboarding checklist.
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