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)
Was it really baked into the price of the goods when the price of the goods hasn’t changed?
If their costs went up by 3%, they could hold prices level by taking the credit card fee out and making it an explicit surcharge.
It sounds like a way of raising the price while incentivizing cash payment (because maybe just maybe they aren’t claiming all their cash sales)