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But why do Americans insist on handing over their card instead of paying at the table? That's weird.

In the rest of the world this issue has been completely solved by apple pay.

>I’ve thought about degaussing its magstripe to make it truly compromise-proof, but I haven’t gone that far yet.

You know you can just scrape it off, right?

America had many many years of accepting credit cards before it was feasible to bring the readers to the table, and by then it was ingrained. My impression is that Europe it was much more common to pay at a counter before wireless card readers came about in the late 90s/early 2000s.

It's becoming more common to bring readers to tables in America now, because Visa and MasterCard have realized the security benefits and are encouraging it, but there's literally 50 years of habit.

Even in countries with Apple Pay, not every bank supports it or other mobile solutions.

In which countries is it genuinely difficult to switch banks?

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