There's something that had genuinely shocked me. I'd heard it from the mouth of an executive, someone "very important" — since he had already been invited onto BFM Business (there is, obviously, a trace of dark humor on my part here). He'd told us: "We already have the software translated into Portuguese, so we can go after Brazil."

As if you could simply go after a country because you'd translated your software into its language.

Well, no. Going after a country is bound up with the culture of that country. And money is surely one of the most divisive elements, and one of the most deeply rooted in culture, from one country to the next.

We often underestimate this dimension. When we talk about internationalization, we think of language, currency, taxes, maybe customer support. We think less about the everyday gestures that structure the real economy: how people pay, whom they trust, which identifiers they use, which platforms are part of their lives, what security or purchasing-power constraints weigh on their choices.

Brazil is a good reminder of this reality. It is not a France translated into Portuguese. It's a country with its own infrastructures, its own reflexes, its own trade-offs. And you see it very quickly in a scene that seems perfectly ordinary: the moment of paying.

This text is not an exhaustive investigation into Brazil. It's a firsthand account based on roughly a cumulative month spent in the State of Rio — that is, the state surrounding the city of Rio de Janeiro — across a range of shops and ordinary situations far removed from the tourist spots: the Brazil of Brazilians. But that's precisely the point: it's those ordinary situations that struck me the most.

A simple checkout counter can become a lesson in economics

In France, paying for a few drinks and a bag of chips is a fairly neutral gesture. You take out your card, you set down your phone, you pay in cash, and the matter is settled. There may be the question of the loyalty card, which is already a nuisance sometimes, but it remains a relatively simple act.

In the State of Rio, that same moment can take on a whole other density.

You may be asked whether you're paying by crédito or débito — in other words, by credit or debit. You may be asked for your CPF, that is, your tax ID number (yes, I did say tax ID number). You may be offered Pix, the instant payment system that has become ubiquitous in Brazil. You may be asked whether you want to pay in installments. And all of this can happen for purchases that, seen from France, look utterly ordinary.

The first thing that surprises you is that question: credit or debit?

In France, credit is often associated with major purchases, or at least with a decision somewhat separate from everyday payment. In Brazil, in the scenes I observed, credit seems far more woven into the act of consuming. You can pay on credit at a pharmacy, for shoes, for modest purchases. Even at around 100 reais — the Brazilian currency, meaning an order of magnitude below 20 euros — you may be offered the option to pay in installments.

I watched someone pay for medication in eight installments and complain about it because it was too expensive. It's a very simple scene, but it says a great deal. Installment payment can be an immediate solution, because it lets you buy something you need right now. But it can also be experienced as a burden, a constraint, a sign that a necessary purchase is becoming hard to absorb.

And this doesn't only concern health-related purchases or unavoidable expenses. A pair of shoes can also be offered in ten installments. In toy shops, including in upscale neighborhoods like Barra, in Rio, you can see fairly ordinary items available in ten installments. For a French person, it's disorienting: installment payment no longer appears merely as a solution for a big purchase (this is currently changing with e-commerce) or as a marker of poverty, but as a normal way of consuming, including for everyday objects or gifts.

I don't know the contractual details of every transaction I observed. That's not the point. The point is that installment payment doesn't appear merely as a marginal commercial convenience. It's part of the landscape.

The data on household debt gives this impression a backdrop. Serasa, a leading Brazilian firm that tracks, among other things, missed payments and consumer creditworthiness, reports tens of millions of Brazilians in a state of inadimplência — that is, with late or defaulted payments. This doesn't prove that every installment payment produces over-indebtedness, but it's a reminder that everyday credit is embedded in a fragile financial environment.

The CPF, or the administrative identifier in ordinary payment

Another surprise: the CPF.

The CPF, short for Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas, is a unique tax ID number assigned to individuals in Brazil. For a French person, you might loosely compare it to a central administrative identifier, with a practical importance that reaches well beyond taxation. In everyday experience, it turns up at moments where you don't necessarily expect the State to make an appearance.

In several shops, at the moment of paying, you're asked for your CPF. Not just for some major administrative procedure. Not just to buy a car or sign a contract. At the register, for ordinary purchases like a simple coffee.

What struck me wasn't only that it's asked for. It was also the social ordinariness of the request. When you refuse, or when you don't have one, cashiers can be taken aback. For a French person, it can give the impression that the ordinary transaction becomes immediately identifiable, tied to a unique number, almost taxed in its most mundane gesture.

A word of caution: I'm not claiming to describe every legal rule that applies here, nor to say that each request for a CPF has the same status. There are mechanisms such as the CPF na nota, literally the CPF on the receipt, which link the CPF to the sales slip or invoice and can follow a tax-incentive logic. But the cultural effect is very strong: the administrative identifier is part of the scene of consumption.

In France, we debate privacy, GDPR, and personal data endlessly. In Brazil, I had the sense of a far more direct relationship between payment, identification and trace. This doesn't mean Brazilians have no relationship to privacy. It means the practical infrastructure of daily life is not the same.

Pix: modernity become ordinary

Then there's Pix.

Pix is an instant payment system set up by the Brazilian Central Bank — the Brazilian equivalent of a central bank — which organizes part of the country's monetary and financial infrastructure. Seen from France, you might be tempted to compare Pix to an instant transfer or a QR-code payment. But in actual use, it's far more than that. Pix is everywhere.

I saw Pix in shops, in service situations, among professionals, in very ordinary uses. From the beach vendor to the doctor, the use of Pix cuts across worlds that, in France, wouldn't necessarily use the same means of payment.

This isn't just a personal impression. The 2023 figures reported by Agência Brasil, the Brazilian public news agency, indicate nearly 42 billion Pix transactions over the year. By number of operations, Pix has become the country's dominant means of payment. It confirms what you feel on the ground: Pix is not a technological curiosity, it's a social infrastructure.

Its appeal is obvious. No need to hand over your card. No need to handle cash. You scan a QR code, you confirm, the money goes. For a great many transactions, it's simple, fast, legible.

This modernity becomes all the more striking when it turns up in very informal scenes. That's where Pix stops being merely a banking tool: it becomes a common language between economic worlds that, seen from France, would seem separate.

But there's also a security reason. On the ground, I was clearly advised against taking traditional taxis, notably because of the risk of card cloning. Brazilians themselves recommend using Uber instead, where payment goes through the app. In that context, Pix isn't just convenient: it also spares you from handing your card to a merchant or a driver, in a country where fraud and card cloning are perceived as very real risks.

But what struck me most was its use in the informal economy.

The informal economy isn't hidden — it's equipping itself

In Brazil, the informal economy is not some small underground reality tucked away in the margins. It's visible. It's right there, in the street, on the beach, in everyday services.

It can even organize some very concrete things. On a beach far from Rio, for instance, men effectively ran the parking: they organized the spaces, took the keys, moved the cars around as others left. It was neither a municipal lot nor a conventional private one. It was an informal arrangement on public space, tolerated because it made the place usable. Without them, there simply wouldn't be enough room to park.

On the beach itself, the informal economy becomes almost a complete micro-economy. Vendors pass by with drinks, with maté — a drink widely consumed in Brazil — biscuits, ice cream, sometimes balloons. You can rent umbrellas or chairs. These aren't kiosks set up along a boardwalk: they're people circulating directly on the sand, with their wares, who can take payment in cash, by card or by Pix.

People also offer services at home. Hairdressers come to do hair or nails. Independent workers, often undeclared, come by for small jobs. There are dog walkers, seamstresses, people who bake cakes or desserts for parties. And many of them can be paid by Pix.

Pix doesn't create this informal economy. It existed before. It's tied to poverty, to necessity, to making do, to the absence of any sufficient economic safety net (zero social assistance). In some cases, the question is brutal: it's work or go hungry.

The important point is that it's often tolerated. Legally, not everything is necessarily in order. But in practice, this economy lets people earn enough to live on, and it serves those who buy. It functions as a social safety valve. In a country where benefits, public services and economic security don't play the same role they do in France, the informal isn't merely an anomaly: it's also a way of holding on.

What Pix changes is that it makes this economy compatible with immediate digital payment.

You could analyze this purely through the lens of traceability: if it's digital, then it's more traceable. That's true, in part. But it isn't necessarily what dominates in the concrete experience. For a small vendor, receiving payment by Pix can also avoid keeping the whole day's takings in cash. It can reduce the risk of theft or assault. It can avoid card fees. It can make the transaction simpler for the customer.

In the explanations I heard on the ground, there was also a dimension of mutual help: paying by Pix rather than by card can spare the vendor from losing a few percent in commission. In a country where many people live on little, those few percent matter.

And this phenomenon isn't confined to working-class settings. In upscale neighborhoods — marked by gated residences, barriers and security systems — you can also see this informal economy at work. A fruit seller may show up in an old pickup truck, cut open pineapples in the street, be known to the residents, accepted by the neighborhood, and have a card reader on hand. Here again, the contrast is stark: a heavily secured, almost sealed-off environment, yet a street economy that keeps existing within the everyday landscape.

And when you ask the residents why this man can roll up with his old pickup and his machete as long as your arm (very shocking to a French person), the residents answer — as if it were self-evident — "we know him."

This blend is very Brazilian in what it reveals: a very modern technology, driven by the Central Bank, used in very informal situations, sometimes for reasons of security or economic survival.

Modernity, control and daily life

That's what makes Brazilian payments so interesting. They won't be reduced to a simple opposition between modernity and poverty, or between formal and informal.

Pix is modern, highly efficient, massive. But it slots into an economy where informality is visible. The CPF allows strong identification. But it turns up in mundane purchases. Credit provides access to consumption. But it can also reveal deep financial fragility.

You see, at once, great fluidity and a strong capacity for control. You can pay very fast by Pix, but you can also have the feeling that a great many things are tied to an identifier, a trace, a public or banking infrastructure.

For a French person, it's disorienting. Not because Brazil would be "behind" or "ahead," but because it doesn't sit on the same mental map. The solutions don't answer the same constraints. The habits weren't built out of the same economic history. The everyday risks aren't the same. The relationship to the State, to the bank, to the informal, to credit, to security is not the same.

That's exactly why a product can't simply be translated.

If your product touches payment, commerce, identity, customer data, delivery, trust, credit, or even just online shopping, you can't assume that the market will work the way it does in France with Portuguese words in place of French ones.

Language is the visible part. Culture lies underneath.

Even Amazon doesn't simply transpose

This gap doesn't only concern payments and the "little people."

Take e-commerce. Seen from France, or more broadly from Europe, you might get the impression that Amazon is the natural player in online commerce. Amazon is extremely entrenched in the French consumer's imagination. It's often the default reflex.

In Brazil, that reflex doesn't transpose so simply. Amazon exists, of course. But the structuring player, the one that occupies a far more central place in local usage, is Mercado Livre — a major Latin American e-commerce and marketplace platform, far more embedded in Brazilian habits.

This point matters because it gives a very simple picture of this article's thesis. Even a global giant like Amazon doesn't automatically become a country's dominant infrastructure just because it arrives with its power, its brand and its translated interface. It meets a market already structured by other habits, other platforms, other means of payment, other logistics networks, other forms of trust.

Payments let you grasp this very quickly. To pay in Brazil is not merely to settle a purchase. It's to enter an economic infrastructure made of everyday credit, of CPF, of Pix, of visible informality, of practical security and of local platforms.

Translating a product can be necessary. But if you truly want to enter a country, you have to look at how people live, buy, pay, identify themselves, work around risks and organize their daily lives.

Culture often begins right there: in the gestures everyone finds normal, except you.