Reminds me of how the cardholder agreements used to all prohibit adding a credit card surcharge to cover the fees. Some of the fees go back to the customer as rewards, so customers especially had no reason to use cash. Now that practice is illegal, and many places are 3-5% cheaper with cash, which is in line with the fees and usually much larger than credit card rewards.
Is that practice illegal? I've never gotten a discount for using cash or debit.
That is the crux of the problem though. By adding fees and then contractually forbidding merchants from passing those fees on to credit card customers, it is forcing non card users to pay for card users fees since the fees are embedded in prices. Plus they're even giving card users kickbacks in the form of points. So non credit card users end up paying more credit card fees than credit card users which is nonsense.