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)
No, it’s the opposite. Humans make mistakes with cash, and the overall drag on the store’s operations (from needing a safe for large amounts of cash, physically transporting cash to be deposited at the bank, dealing with theft/loss) tends to be higher than credit cards.
That’s why a lot of places have switched to entirely cashless operations, because cash is slow and expensive for them.