Brazilian buses now have RFID readers. The readers are exactly like the ones I saw in Finland: a box about 5x10x20cm with a screen that says “Passe” when you swipe a plastic card with an RFID chip in it. This would all be very modern and civilized if it weren’t for two things that make Rio busses quite different from those in Helsinki:
First, there is a narrow turnstile that you need to get through. I can only get through it sideways myself, and I am pretty thin. (So your average hamburger-fed American might as well forget about it.) After a while you also learn a particular butt maneuver that allows you to get through the turnstile without using your hands. It’s a bit tricky, since you have to move sideways, yet butt-first at the same time. It’s very entertaining to watch people do it.
Second, you don’t actually usually swipe a card. Instead, you pay R$1,80 in cash to a “cobrador” sitting on a chair next to a turnstile. ‘What’s the reader for?’ you might ask. Well, after you pay your R$1.80 the cobrador swipes his card by the reader, which opens the turnstile. Some of the clever ones even tie the card to the back of their hand so that they could swipe them faster. You can actually buy your own “RioCard” and swipe it instead of paying cash, but doing so is complicated, involving multiple steps over the Internet and requiring that you provide tons of information about yourself. As a result, I've only seen one person using the card so far.
The RFID + cobrador combo examplifies a common pattern of technology use in Brazil where advanced technology is combined with manual labor. A few weeks ago I was standing in line at a restaurant holding a piece of paper that had a sticker with a barcode stating the price of my entry, as well as a check in one of the columns showing the price of my drink. So the cashier was supposed to scan the sticker, then enter the code for the drink, then ring up the total. However, there was only one cash register, and a line started growing longer. So, two women started walking down the line, taking everyones cards, adding up the total on a calculator, and writing it on the card, so that the cashier could just type in the total (saving about 10 seconds). So, there is a modern cash-register with a scanner, but there is only one, and it’s cheaper to send several women with calculators to figure out the totals.