Maybe my memory is faulty, but I never remembered having to pay a surcharge to use a credit card. Now everywhere I go there are signs saying that there is a 2.5-3.5% surcharge to use a car (and others that say that there’s a 2.5-3.5% discount for using cash, I assume to get around wording)
I’ve seen it a lot for over a decade. It is usually small businesses who did it since the cost to manage cash is almost zero. There was a reform bill which said that you couldn’t charge more for credit, but there wasn’t anything about giving a discount for cash.
I’ve been seeing it more for places with large transactions because the 3% is meaningful for those businesses.
Large companies don’t do it because credit is preferable for them.