> Why is it so hard to pull a card out of your pocket?

Because I haven't carried a card for years now. I couldn't even tell you where my physical credit card is.

I guess this is very geographic dependent. I live in a country where only maybe 80% of merchants accept Visa/Mastercard (and thus only those can accept Google/Apple Pay) so I need to either carry a card for our domestic payment card infrastructure–or carry cash in order to be able to transact with any shops.