The surcharges are annoying, but in a way that annoyance is good - because it is a regular reminder that the bank is taking a slice of your money each time. Without that surcharge notification, the bank is still taking a slice of your money, but you don’t get told about it.

Part of the changes being made are to reduce what the banks can charge - and that surely is a good thing, since without intervention, banks would have the power to charge basically anything. Curtailing the power of banks is a good thing.

But the part of the change that prevents stores from having a ‘user pays’ system for their transaction fees is less clear cut. It’s good from a simplicity point of view, but it does actually further entrench card use - and thus reliance on card-processing companies. Again, these companies could go on to charge unreasonable fees at any time unless carefully watched by the government. It would be much better if we weren’t embedding complete reliance on particular private companies into our society.