Yes, the pervasiveness of surcharging certainly is a factor. A Jan 2024 Paymentsdive article mentions a December 2023 memo from acquirer Priority Technology holdings to their merchants mentions "increased enforcement" for non-compliant surcharging. In June of 2023, the CEO of Visa bashed surcharges as "not a great customer experience". An earlier article from April 2023 indicated that Visa upped their fine to a potential $5,000 for the first surcharging transaction with a potential $1 million fine for repeated violations.

Of course this could be more barking than bite, with the merchant getting a nastygram and warned of the potential for jaw dropping fines being a massive incentive to either make surcharging compliant or drop it entirely.

In my area of New York (state, not five boroughs), surcharging seems most popular at independent restaurants or other eateries (example of the bakery in my earlier post). In New York, it's easier to point out that explicit surcharging is actually illegal beyond just violating network rules to merchants...

In terms of why large brands aren't surcharging, I think it creates a logistical nightmare for customer experience. Beyond the optics which would probably go viral of Walmart/Safeway/Home Depot/etc. passing on their cost of doing business to the consumer, you have states where surcharges are capped at different levels (2% in Colorado for example), you have multiple states where explicit surcharging is illegal (Expressions Hair Design v. Schneidermann remand had surcharges illegal in NY for years, but codifying the remand in written law to be even more black and white wasn't effective until Feb 2024) or where it's limited (Colorado, NJ, others), etc. and you're setting up for a recipe of inconsistent experience if you're a retailer that operates in multiple states or nationwide.