Restaurants have been accepting payment by credit card, for obvious reasons, for my entire lifetime. Just this summer, however, I have noted a fairly general practice of including a percentage convenience fee for the use of credit cards on bills.
This new development is not, as far as I can tell, being driven by any new demands on the part of the credit card companies. The logical conclusion is that the restaurants are now charging for the use of plastic because they think they can get away with it in an inflationary environment. If prices are increasing everywhere, and people grow to accept it, businesses can take advantage of the situation by adding fees and thereby increasing profits.
This is the kind of cycle that has to be stopped in order to ease inflationary pressures. I’m doing my part by paying cash in restaurants and making an issue of the line item on the bill.