You can get the incremental security easily at home: swipe over your card with a strong magnet. Now card thieves (and you) can only use chip & PIN payments. As

You can get the incremental security easily at home: swipe over your card with a strong magnet. Now card thieves (and you) can only use chip & PIN payments. As a warning before trying this for real: most ATMs annoyingly check both the chip and magstripe, so you won't be able to get cash out even in countries where chip & PIN are the widely used in payment terminals. Found out by carrying my cards in a phone case with a snap-close magnet. Eventually banks are going to stop issuing cards with magstripes on them. But this will take years, until everyone has both on their cards and both readers in their terminals.